Ten Years Gone
by coloe
Summary: Sequel to previous fic "The Inside" - still makes sense without reading that one first though! Title from the Zeppelin song ;) The story of how ten years pass after Brendan tries to save Ste... and of when they meet again, knowing what life apart has been.
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE: Year 2021 – Leah **

For the fourth time in fifteen minutes, Leah felt a tug on her sleeve. She sighed heavily and swivelled the wheel on her iPod to mute the volume.

"What?!"

"See there? That's the school me and your mam went to, that." He was gesticulating earnestly towards an average-sized, average-shaped, average-coloured school, half an eye cast on the road in front of the second hand Passat as it made its way slowly along.

"One time, right, this teacher, Davis, he caught me burning an 'ole in the desk and…"

But Leah was already swivelling the volume back up, drowning him out angrily. Amanda was probably plastering herself in fake tan this very minute. This was so unfair!

"But whyyyyyyyy?" she had whined at Mum two days ago, when the weekend trip was sprung on her. Mum had waited until after dinner to drop the bombshell. Probably thinking she'd be more likely to agree on a full stomach. Wrong again, Mum. "It's a business trip! Why do me and Luke need to go?!"

"It'll be nice getting to see the place where you two were born," Mum coaxed. "You spent the first five years of your life there, love, aren't you curious to see it?"

Leah hadn't even dignified that with a response. How could she not understand? Amanda's party! THE party! Of the year! Of the decade! Of her entire teenage life!

"You're doing it for your Dad, guys. He wants you with him," Mum cajoled.

Low blow. Leah folded her arms tightly across her chest, blocking out the sneaky attack. She thought of Ed Bracken's lopsided smile at the bus stop that morning. Maybe see you at the party, he'd said.

Maybe see her at the party! Her, Leah!

"He always wants us with him," Luke mumbled, digging his spoon into the Vienneta in front of him.

"Of course he does, he's your Dad," Mum said softly, and Leah couldn't miss the forlorn little glance she exchanged with Lee. With effort, she kept the scowl etched onto her face, trying not to think of Dad at that moment, sitting in his little flat in East Manchester with a meal for one.

Ed frickin' Bracken, for Christ's sake!

"Look guys, this is a big deal for your Dad," Mum continued to needle. "Hollyoaks was the very first branch of Carter and Hay. It's kind of… special to him. I know he hasn't lived there for years, but he's gutted to let go of it."

No, this was playing dirty!

"He needs your support, guys," Mum was still needling. "It'll be the first time he's seen Doug since he married that bloke from Liverpool."

Leah'd never even stood a chance.

She'd been blaring the angriest music she could find on her iPod since she climbed into the car that morning, trying to drown out Dad's incessant nattering, thinking of the torturous shopping trip she'd had to go on yesterday where she watched her friends pick their outfits for Saturday night. Her life was over, she hoped her stupid selfish parents knew that. Over.

And now, as the battered Passat finally cruised into the oh-so-famous Hollyoaks, it seemed like every post-box they passed was reminding Dad of some pointless waffling anecdote.

"Here, if you go up that side street there, and turn left at the end, that's our old flat there! I'll take you to see it later, if you like, kids?"

Leah groaned inwardly at the thought. How could this be happening to her? The most important social event of her life so far and she was missing it to get a guided tour of some grotty old flat? Eventually, they halted in front of a small shop-front, an aqua-blue sign embossed with the familiar lettering "Carter and Hay". Leah was surprised.

"Is this it?"

"Course it is," Dad responded, screwing his lips into a fond little smile. "Where it all started."

"But it's tiny!" she blurted. This was a quarter of the size of the sprawling, bustling Manchester branch they were used to.

"Well you gotta start small, Leah," he told her with an irritating know-it-all wink. "Paris weren't built in a day, y'know."

"Rome," she corrected automatically but he wasn't even listening. His eyes were misting over as they drank in the modest little shop. Leah rolled her own. God, Dad could be so soppy sometimes, it was beyond embarrassing.

"This one time, right," he was choking. "There were this dead posh kid working here, Barney his name was… think his mam were like a third cousin of a duke or summat… and he picks up this tray of cups, right, like twenty-six of 'em, and–"

"And he smashed them," Leah finished for him. She had heard this story a hundred times already. Just like all of Dad's stories.

"Yeah," Dad sniggered, the hilarity of the memory swatting away his nostalgia temporarily. Thank Christ. "Right, come on you lot, let's go find Doug shall we?"

"What's that Dad?" Luke asked placidly as they climbed out of the car. Leah swivelled round to glower at him. What was he doing?! The last thing Dad needed was encouragement to tell more pointless anecdotes.

Dad followed his finger to a grey, dominating construction across the street. Leah followed it too. It was enormous, pressing the buildings around it into submission with its towering presence, rudely interrupting the generous rays of sunlight that were trying to warm the street. Leah couldn't place it. She scanned through the countless stories and descriptions she had been fed over the years but none seemed to allude to this monstrosity.

"It's… well, it's a nightclub, innit? I used to work there, once," Dad answered softly. Leah waited for the "this one time, right", but it didn't come.

As they stared, a door on the first floor slammed open and a man stomped out onto the balcony, broad-shoulders filling out a tailored suit, black hair slicked back with gel, fists bunched up in a frustration that matched the hard line of his mouth. Suddenly, he looked down at them, as if he felt their gaze on the back of his neck. Leah shuddered involuntarily. His eyes were dark, angry, but she felt like they were screaming in terror at her too. As he watched them the hard line of his mouth slowly relaxed and it fell open, surprised recognition.

"Was that your boss?" she whispered, disliking the intense, curious way the man was looking at her father.

"Naw, that's just some jumped up little wannabe," her Dad replied, his voice uncharacteristically bitter. Leah's gaze broke from the stranger and swung to her father instead, surprised to see his eyes narrowed as he stared up at the other man. "Got handed a nightclub as a present from his daddy, didn't he?" He paused before he spoke again and when he did, his voice was softer. Sad, Leah thought. "No, the bloke I worked for moved away from here. A long time ago."

Without warning, he turned on his heel and disappeared through the aqua-blue door, bell jingling merrily above his head. Slowly, Leah and Lucas followed him inside.

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Was it possible to die from boredom? If it was, Leah was definitely having a near-death experience right now.

Three hours, that's how long she'd been sitting on that uncomfortable bar stool listening to Dad say "d'ya remember the time, right" over and over again and smiling politely as perfect strangers told her she was the image of her mother.

"D'ya remember that time, right," Dad was telling a broad grey-haired man called Tony, "when me and Doug, we was both trying to get the job in College Coffee? And he only went and put salt in the coffees I'd made!"

Leah smirked at the way Doug shifted uncomfortably on his stool. That's right, Dougie-boy, squirm! She hated everything about him. The weedy, bunched-up frame. The grating American twang. The heavy, undulating eyebrows that reminded her of caterpillars. The little fleeting glimpses of deadness she saw in her Dad's eyes sometimes, between his prattling stories and ceaseless chatter. She'd seen one today when they met Doug's shocked face and uneasy smile and worried protest that her Dad shouldn't have come all the way, he could have taken care of everything himself.

She could barely remember the night that Dad had shown up on their doorstep in Manchester, dripping with rain and tears, telling Mum that he and Doug were over. But she knew he had never fallen in love again. All of her memories from childhood were of him throwing himself into work with a frenzied maniacal obsession, building his business like his life depended on it, like he couldn't bear to stop for one second and let his feelings seep through. Even today, as he presided over a successful chain and could finally rest back on his hunkers now that all his work had paid off, the only people he wanted to spend time with were her or Luke or Mum.

Unbidden, the memory of that eavesdropped conversation floated from the back of her head where it wavered, inerasable. She was eleven. One a.m. Dad was babysitting while Mum and Lee were at some work function. She had purposely forced herself to stay awake, and was just preparing to creep down the stairs and curl herself under Dad's arm with a little fib about not being able to sleep. She just wanted to make the most of him while he was here. But as her feet reached the top step of the stairs, Mum and Lee crashed through the door, whispering loudly about staying quiet. She waited a few moments at the top of the stairs, wondering whether to go back to bed. But she could hear Lee snoring on the couch now and Mum and Dad were talking to each other in low, murmuring voices, using those hushed tones that pique curiosity. Silently, she eased her way down the stairs and pressed a delicate ear to the door. Mum's voice was imploring, thick with worry.

"It's been years, Ste. You have to let go of him. Everything he's done to you… All the times he hurt you, Ste… And he's still hurting you now, when he's not even here."

Leah's pulse pounded in her throat. She held her breath, sure that even the slightest whisper would get her caught.

Afterwards, she wished she had been caught. Anything to stop her hearing her gentle, funny Dad's response.

"You don't get it, Ames." He coughed it, an awful, tearless sigh. "He's in my bones."

Now, she glared stonily at the protesting American as he defended himself against her Dad's laughing accusations. Whatever Doug had done to her father, he had left him half-broken living a ghost life.

"Boss!" a new voice cried, cutting into her thoughts as it bellowed loudly beside her ear. What was wrong with people in this village and their invasion of personal space?! "Back to sell the old business, eh? Ah, we had some jolly good times in there!"

"Yeah, yeah we did!" Dad was nodding eagerly. "'Ey, Leah and Lucas, this is Barney, this! D'ya remember the time you smashed all them cups, Barney?"

The floppy-haired man peered down at them, affability dripping out of him.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, looking at Leah. "Has anyone ever told you you're the image of your mother?!"

Leah couldn't take it any longer. She announced she was getting a drink, stomping her way from the raucous table to the bar with Dad's shouts to make sure it was non-alcoholic ("you're only sixteen, remember!") wafting behind her.

"Parent's, who'd 'av 'em?" a deep voice breathed into her ear from behind. With a jump she whirled around and found herself nose-to-nose with bright white grinning teeth and dark twinkling chocolate eyes. Her breath stuttered, unable to string itself into a sentence with the face so close to her own.

"I'm Charlie," he smirked, and she felt her stomach lurch at the way the corner of his mouth tugged upwards when he spoke. "My aunt and uncle run this place."

"Leah," she breathed, finding some air inside her chest to get the syllables out. His chocolate eyes watched her closely as she spoke. "Save me, please?"

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"Shhhh," she whispered and then ignored her own warning by dissolving into helpless giggles. She was looking at her brother's backside as he hung, halfway-in and halfway-out of a toilet window.

"Come on, Luke, move it!" she hissed, gathering herself together again.

"I'm… try… ing…" he panted as he wriggled. Suddenly, he disappeared and Leah heard a low thump as his body hit the ground. "I'm okay!"

"One down," she affirmed herself.

Okay, so the plan wasn't perfect. When she'd sidled up to Dad with a sickly sweet smile on her face he'd seen through her immediately, and as soon as she suggested that she might go exploring, he'd hitched Luke onto her coattails as a precaution. But Luke was malleable, and it had taken Leah all of about ten minutes to convince him that wriggling through the window of the female toilet in the local nightclub would be a great adventure. Now, as she slid her way through to join him in a crumpled heap on the floor, she allowed herself a moment of triumph.

"Right, come on," she whispered, clambering to her feet and dragging him up too. "Let's go find Charlie."

"Leah," he started to protest. "Look at me."

Leah chewed on her bottom lip as she drank in his scuffed runners, his faded jeans and his Man City jersey. Not to mention his round, fourteen-year-old face. But she'd come too far at this point. Charlie was in there somewhere. She was going back to Manchester with a breath-taking story for Amanda. End of.

"There'll be loads of people, no one will notice," she reassured him before grabbing him by the arm and yanking him out into the club.

The place was packed with bodies, shouting noisily over the pulse of techno that hummed through the floors and walls. The smell of sweat and perfume filled her nostrils, hot from people. Self-consciously, she ran a hand through her hair. How was going to find Charlie in this mess of people?

"Hey, Leah!" a voice shouted. Two heavy hands were on her arms, spinning her around. "You got in!"

Again, she felt her breath falter as she met those brown eyes, now almost black as his pupils dilated in the darkness. He was bobbing, moving his body to the beat of the base.

"Drink?" he asked, offering her a glass filled with black-coloured liquid. She took it and drank deeply through the straw, hoping to stave away some of the self-consciousness that had started to seep into her since entering this foreign land. She bit back the cough when the liquor hit the back of her throat.

"Hey, what about me?" Luke demanded. She smiled, threw a playful smack against his ear. She was a tiny bit glad he was here, in this unfamiliar place with her.

"You're too young to drink," she reminded him.

"So are you."

"Fair point."

She conceded, offering him a gulp from the glass.

Then time fractured into racing, slowed-down moments. Charlie's finger pressing into the small of her back. Luke sliding the black drink out of her grasp, sucking hungrily. Tugging lips leaning into her. Luke flying backwards, choking cry whipping her ears. Charlie's hands falling away, abandoning her. Luke's limbs flailing, toes scraping the ground, gasping against the reefed-up collar of his jersey. A giant wrapping his fist around the collar, a massive expanse of black, furious eyes boring into her brother, vein throbbing grotesquely on his forehead.

Real time flooded back in a rush of colour and noise.

"Get your hands off him," she shrieked, flinging herself at the giant's claw where it was wrapped around her brother's collar, strangling the air from him.

"Back off, little girl," he growled. The boring eyes swung to her, bloodthirsty and black and maniacal. Her fingers were useless, prising at the iron claw. Luke coughed, choking against the material.

"Brendan… Brendan, it were only a drink," Charlie stammered, shaking fingers finding their way onto her back again.

In an instant, Luke was dropped to the floor and the giant's claws were squeezing against Charlie, slamming him back into the toilet door. He opened his thin, blood-red lips to bare snarling teeth.

"And who bought it for him?"

Leah's heart was stuttering to a slower rhythm now that Luke was freed. Immediately, her arms wrapped themselves tightly around the boy.

"Let him go," she ordered, pouring courage that she didn't feel into the words. Terror was jumping from Charlie's face and filling her up dreadfully. "Let him go, or we'll get you done for assault."

She heard the giant inhale deeply, a rasping ragged sound that flared his nostrils. His fingers twitching undecidedly at Charlie's neck, teeth still bared ferociously.

"Will you… now?" he asked, his voice strangely conversational against the backdrop of his massive leering frame. "Now really, I don't think Charles, here–" he slapped Charlie's face face lightly "–would do that. I don't think that Uncle Darren would think that was a very good idea."

Charlie's face was screwed up, trying to block out the hot, wet breath laced with heavy threat.

"Maybe his uncle wouldn't, but my Dad would!" Leah bolstered, arms still wrapped tightly around her little brother.

Charlie was thrown aside. Now the giant's face was pressed up into Leah, clammy breath on her chin, whiskers from his moustache scratching the soft skin of her cheek. His voice bled into her ear, laughing.

"Well then your Daddy is a fool."

Leah could feel her body start to tremble, the molten threat leaking through her bravado. She bit back the tears of fear that were forming at the back of her eyes as the long, twitching fingers hovered near her cheek.

"Hey, Brendan! Brendan, get away!"

The giant was suddenly reefed backwards by strong hands. Dimly, Leah was aware of the man they'd seen on the balcony earlier, arms wrapped around the chest of the giant, imploring him to calm down. The giant shook him off, but the maniacal eyes seemed quieter.

"They're underage," he panted, by way of explanation.

"Brendan," the other man breathed, horror spilled across his face.

"Get them out of my club," the giant spat at Charlie, jabbing an index finger into his chest before turning to be swallowed up by the pulse of bodies.

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"What's happened?!"

Dad's voice was tight, barely holding back the surge of panic at the sight of Leah's tearstained face, Luke's painful coughs. His eyes fell to Charlie and in a second he had him pinned just like the giant at the club.

"What 'ave you done to my kids?"

Some of the other men were climbing to their feet now, telling Dad to take it easy, but he was deaf to them. Leah reached a shaky hand out and placed in on his arm, pulling him back.

"Dad, it wasn't his fault," she said, trying to bite back the whimper from her voice. What was wrong with her? The moment they had stepped out of that black pit into the night air she had dissolved, inconsolable, all attempts at a front gone. She could still feel the hot breath against her chin, terrible powerlessness engulfing her.

Dad's grip on Charlie's collar relaxed minutely under her touch. She tightened her fingers on his arm.

"It was the bloke who owns the nightclub," she battled on, pushing the frightened tears back down. "He grabbed Luke, Charlie tried to stop him." The scene was playing out in slow motion in her head as she recounted it. "And then he started on me."

Dad's hands dropped from Charlie's neck and when he turned to face her she felt more afraid than she had at any point so far. He was ashen, features twisted into a grotesque combination of livid fury and nauseating fear.

"Did he touch you?" he whispered.

"No," she hurried, trying to swallow the racing pulse she could feel in the back of her throat. Some vague flush of colour came back to his cheeks when she said that, at least.

"Well he ain't getting away with it, not this time," Dad said, fury roaring to the fore now that the fear was somewhat abated. "That little Scottish upstart don't get to push my kids around!"

"No, Ste, it's not–" Doug was on his feet, shouting after him but Dad had already stormed out of the pub.

Leah stared after him. _"Well then your Daddy is a fool"_. She heard the words, bleeding mirthless laughter into her ear again, maniacal eyes dancing over her trembling skin. Her stomach lurched.

"Dad, wait!" she cried, racing out of the pub after him.

She didn't catch up to him until he was on the shaky metal staircase leading to the entrance.

"Dad, I don't think you should go in there," she pleaded. The vision of those giant hands, pinning Charlie effortlessly against the wall, floated in front of her.

"Leave it, Leah," he bit, his eyes determined.

"I'm okay now, Luke's okay!" she wheedled, begging him to come back. It was useless. She knew better than anyone. She got her stubbornness from him, everyone said that.

"We need a word with your boss," Dad barked at the bouncer, shoving him roughly aside, plunging into the heaving, writhing pump of base and bodies. Leah dived after him, pathetically scrabbling at his heels as he marched to a heavy metal door in the back wall. He flung it open without knocking and barged in.

"Oi, Dexter, I want a word with you!" he bellowed at the man he met behind the door.

But no, this wasn't him. This was the man who dragged the giant away.

"No, Dad," she tugged at him, looking around in confusion.

Suddenly, her eyes fell on him, standing a metre away to the side. The giant. Massive and dark and terrifying.

Only he didn't look like a giant now. She was confused. He looked tiny now, cowering and shocked, like he was about to be smashed into a million little pieces.

"No, Dad," she said again. "That's not him. It was him, there."

Dad followed her shaky finger to the tiny giant. The giant's face crumpled, like that smashing blow had invisibly come down on top of his head.

"Stephen," he choked out.

Leah was stunned. Her eyes flew from the crumpled face of her tormenter to her father's. He was frozen, furious eyes bulging dangerously, face ashen with nauseous fear again, lips curled into a yearning whimper. She felt her heart stop.

The moment swayed like that, incredibly still without her own heartbeat. Suddenly, Dad's face contorted into some undefinable mess of emotion and he threw it all into the tightly balled-up fist that swung through the air, meeting the giant's face with a sickening crunch of skin and bone.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO: Year 2013 – Ste**

"There's a three-for-two on those!"

"What?"

Frankie Osbourne's piercing gaze was fixed on him, expecting something from him. He felt himself recoil from it, that blaring gaudy demand.

"Those Brillo pads, they're three-for-two!"

Ste allowed his confused eyes to follow her gaze to his hand which was wrapped around the silver foil wrapper of a Brillo pad.

"Oh, right," he mumbled. "Ta."

Dropping his eyes to the floor he turned his body back to the shelf boasting Price Slice's selection of cleaning supplies, away from the vivid artificial colour of the woman. His eyes roved absently over the selection before him. Oven cleaner and Brillo pads, that was what Doug had told him to get.

After a few more minutes he had successfully wrapped his other hand around a bright orange bottle of oven cleaner. Oven cleaner and Brillo pads, there. He made his way to the cash register, trying not to heed the concerned expression on Frankie's face. He'd got them, the oven cleaner and the Brillo pads.

Life had moved like this for a few weeks now. Underwater. Slow, silent motion, washed in eerie blue-rinse light, pushed from all directions with weightless pressure. Ste was glad to have it like this, glad to have sunk into this numb pool after the screaming vivid reality of the first few days. The only thing he didn't like was hiding it from everyone else. They all seemed to live on land.

"Don't you want to get a third one?" Frankie was asking him now, her forehead creased in confusion.

Ste looked down at the two Brillo pads he had placed on the counter top. He felt like he was acting out a part in a play.

"Oh yeah," he told her. "Yeah, I do."

He was back at the shelf of cleaning supplies, trying to remember what he was supposed to be fetching, when the bell tinkled above the door announcing another customer's arrival. It didn't even register with him until he heard the voice.

"Hiya Frankie, love, could I just get a couple of lottery tickets please?"

Ste's ears pricked up when he heard the familiar lilt, some vague breath of wind finding its way impossibly through the weight of water engulfing him.

"Yeah, course Cheryl. You alright, love? You seem a little down."

"Ach, aye. It's just, y'know, Declan's off tomorrow. Suppose I've gotten used to having him around."

Ste definitely felt the breeze caress his face now. He turned away from the shelf, watching the back of the blonde curly head. Declan was leaving?

"So he's got the all clear from the doctors then?" Frankie was saying.

"He has, thank God. You know Frankie, they thought for a while that he might need dialysis for the rest of his life. It makes me shiver just thinking about it. His whole life."

Ste was moving forwards now, his legs pushing against the swirling current to get closer to the faint flutter of wind.

"Did… Did you say Declan were leaving, Cheryl?"

"Ste!" Her body stiffened minutely, her voice pulling itself a little tighter. She was still nervous of him, afraid of the way he'd thrown himself at her feet and begged and beseeched and demanded information in those first few vivid screaming days.

"Yes," she replied, carefully. She wouldn't look him full in the eye, Ste noticed sadly. She didn't need to worry anymore. Not now that he was underwater. "He's going back to Belfast, to Eileen."

"I'm surprised he didn't go back before now," Frankie commented, lightly, apparently oblivious to the wealth of unspoken words that filled the little shop. "I mean, they have doctors in Belfast too, don't they? Why did he need to stay in Hollyoaks?"

"He wanted to stay here," Cheryl answered, voice suddenly small. "Waiting for… But I suppose he's given up now. For the best, really."

With those words, Ste's numbing pool of water washed up against his face again, blocking out any flicker of wind. Waiting for Brendan. For Brendan to come back. And now he'd given up. Shit. No. It was too soon to give up. Wasn't it? He tried to open his mouth to speak, but it filled the water and he was dumb. He tried to fill his lungs but the dead weight pressed against his chest. His heart was trying to beat heat around him but coolness had immersed him.

"D-does Brendan know?" he managed to utter eventually, squeezing the question out around the thick liquid. He had interrupted Frankie in the middle of a sentence about he-didn't-even-know-what.

Now the coolness was coming from Cheryl, ice etched into the hard line of her mouth, the impenetrable brown eyes.

"No, Ste. Brendan doesn't know because he ran away."

She had been like this for weeks. Immovable. Unforgiving. The quiet empathy that she and Ste had shared, together loving and hating Brendan, had evaporated. Ste couldn't fathom what the man could have done to finally lose her, and he couldn't tell her what he had learned that made him finally understand him. They had moved to opposite ends, separated by eons of impassable space.

"He's trying to protect Declan," Ste could hear himself protesting dully. He wished he could just shut up, stop pouring pointless defences out into his friend's deaf ears. "He thinks he's doing what's best for him."

"He's doing what's best for himself," Cheryl bit, slicing through Ste's numbness momentarily and cutting into his skin. Not because of words being spoken, but because it was Cheryl saying them. He felt the sting of the wound, hot against his cold existence. "He's running away like the coward he is."

"No, Cheryl, stop," Ste said, loudly. The numbing water was still there, but Cheryl's knifing words jolted a whisper of forgotten passion. He felt Frankie shifting uncomfortably. So what? He couldn't let Cheryl say these things. She didn't even know how her own father had crippled the man. "You don't understand, you 'aven't a clue!"

"I understand plenty, Ste! Brendan is a fucking coward, that's the truth!" She half-shouted those words back at him, but her voice fell quiet as she continued, eyes wide and wild as they watched something that Ste and Frankie couldn't see. "A coward and a monster."

"Cheryl," Ste whispered, his hand suddenly finding its way into hers and pressing its fingers into the soft skin of her palm. Finally he saw her eyes soften, the chocolate brown melting as they looked sadly into his pleading ones.

"I'm sorry for what he's done to you, too, Ste," she whispered back. Then she pulled her hand away and took a step backwards before turning and hurrying out of the shop. Ste stared after her, clinging to the third Brillo pad in his hands and feeling the cool water swallowing him up, airtight.

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Three a.m. and Ste lay staring at the faint orange stain on the flowery bedroom wallpaper. He had been staring at it for hours now, memorising the jagged edge and the low sweeping circle that completed it. Leah had created it, years ago, racing from the kitchen with a plate of spaghetti in her hands and flinging it violently at the bedroom wall during a two-year-old tantrum. The "Terrible Two's", they called it. He'd been so pissed off the day it happened, scrubbed ferociously at it to try and erase the mark. Afterwards, in his child-free home, it became precious, a tribute to the wonderful chaos of his kids. Now it was just like everything else. Unreal. Artificial. Part of a world that everybody else seemed to live in.

He could feel the weight of Doug's arm across his midriff, thrown casually. He was able to throw it casually now. When he first came home from the States, when he found Ste rocking back and forth on the threadbare sofa in the dark, Doug's touch had been timid, filled with unspoken anxiety. But then three months had passed. Three months had turned Ste's screaming vivid reality into strange washed-out numbness. Three months had Ste wrapping clinging arms around Doug's neck to keep himself from floating away in the black ocean. Three months had Ste's clawing fingers pressing themselves into Doug's skin, making sure that he was still there even though he couldn't feel. Three months had made Doug secure again, secure enough to run a suggestive finger down Ste's spine as they climbed into bed that night, to throw a casual arm across his body as he drifted into slumber after they had finished love-making.

Probably, after three months, he thought that Ste's closed eyes weren't seeing a hazy, washed-out fluorescent orange café anymore. Probably, he thought that Ste's strangely silent world wasn't filled with echoes of a droning, nonchalant voice_. "He's gone, lad. Ran out of the place like he left the oven on. He said to tell ya thanks for trying. And that he's sorry. Oh yeah, and that you should call Douglas, yeah, that were it."_

The sleepless hours that had followed that sentence were like scenes from a movie to Ste now. The boy standing staring at the fluorescent orange wall, the blond girl arriving, hair bed-messed and eyes like worried saucers, roving his face and arms with her hands as she tried to pull him back to life, the boy going with her because he had nothing else to do. After fifteen minutes in Mike's car he had known where he needed to go.

"Take me back to Hollyoaks!" he demanded, almost shouting at the driver.

"Ste, you're in no fit state–" Amy started to protest but he cut her off.

"Take me back!" he shouted, angry panic building up like a wave inside him. "Take me back or leave me here and I'll walk!"

"Ste, what did Brendan do to you?"

Ste had felt the air sucked out of him with that question. What had Brendan done to him? What hadn't the man done to him? Grabbed him by the wrist, yanked him into a world of darkness and blinding fucking light, shown him the exquisite pleasure of existence and the crippling need of obsession. How could he even have started to explain, to tell that father and daughter living sunshined lives, that Brendan Brady's branches were his sky and ground and world around? How could these people, who walked through the world certain of their right to be there, understand that the mistaken misshapen existence he hid from the sunny world they belonged to made glorious sense with Brendan's hot, tight arms wrapped up in him?

"I need to find him," he breathed, ragged. His face had burned in Ste's memory, the wet crumpled face with raw eyes and trembling lips. That night, Ste made Brendan's misshapen existence make sense too, just for an hour. He knew he had.

Something in the way he said it must have impacted on her, because they drove him home. An hour and forty minutes in silence, Ste's mind bleeding chaotically with everything since he slammed his way into Brendan's office the evening before. When the car pulled to a slow halt outside his cold, damp flat he sprang from it without a word of thanks or goodbye. The futile scenes had played repeatedly in his brain since that day. The boy's feet racing up the steps to the blue door, the boy's fists pummelling as he shouts the name over and over, the neighbour's door finally opening and the sleepy head poking out. "For Christ's sake, Ste, what are you playing at? It's five in the bloody morning!"

"Sorry Tony. I'm sorry," the boy staggering backwards.

The boy staring up at a nightclub then, massive and dark, imposing shadow engulfing him, blocking even the wan light of the moon. The boy collapsing into the familiar gutter. Daylight creeping into the village and the boy trudging to an empty shabby flat and sitting on a threadbare sofa, concentrating on the sound of his own breathing and the sick knot of knowing that the light has gone out forever.

Ste felt Doug's arm shift across his torso. He stayed very still, barely daring to breathe, praying that he wouldn't wake, eyes fixed dispassionately on the once-beloved orange stain.

He had lied earlier when Doug had asked what took him so long to get the cleaning supplies.

"They 'ad no Brillo pads, did they! Frankie went to fetch some from the store room, took ages."

It wasn't a necessary lie. If Ste had told him about meeting Cheryl, about Declan leaving, there would have been no argument. There never was anymore. Not since Doug had burst into the flat three months ago, fresh off his last-minute flight home from California, bubbling with love and apologies and promises of forever. Ste was silent and shrivelled, rocking gently back and forth in the pitch-black living room.

Doug had fallen instantly silent too. Wordlessly, he'd led him by the hand to the bathroom. He eased the broken boy from his sand-covered clothes, allowing the water in the shower to run hot before guiding him into the comforting steam. Afterwards, he patted his hunched, naked body with a soft blue towel and lay him gently on the mattress, covering his heartbreak with the hugging duvet. Doug lay on the covers, watching and not touching, and Ste felt sleep finally tug at his eyelids and pull him into unconsciousness. When he awoke thirteen hours later, Doug was still watching. Slowly, he leaned forward and brushed dry, undemanding lips against Ste's, asking a wordless question. It was the only question he had asked that day.

Ste's mind had still been facing a fluorescent orange café, his ears were full of a droning nonchalant voice. His hands were scrabbling for branches, branches that had trapped him and had sheltered him, branches that were his sky and his ground. Through it though, he had felt Doug's question on his lips and had been overwhelmed by it. By its acceptance and its forgiveness. Abject fear roiled in his gut. They were gone, his branches, suddenly and forever. He could feel the world slipping away from him, the hot tight arms vanished, the sunny world he had never really belonged in further away than ever. He felt Doug's question on his lips and he answered, softly pressing back into the pink mouth, telling him to stay. Doug asked no more questions.

Still, Ste lied to him about meeting Cheryl. A little lie, a fib. Easier than watching that flicker of hurt.

Doug stirred again, opening his mouth in a bleary yawn before his blue eyes flickered open.

"Hey," he murmured, catching Ste's sleepless face. "Can't you sleep?"

"No, not really," Ste whispered back, chewing on his lip.

Doug's hand rubbed at the skin of Ste's abdomen, gently tracing the contour of the muscle.

"Don't wake yourself though," Ste went on, carefully extracting himself from Doug. "I might just sit up for a bit, 'ave a glass of milk or summat."

Doug's eyes were already closed by the time Ste was slipping on his tracksuit bottoms and picking up his keys from the dresser.

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"Alright Declan?" he grinned ridiculously, as if it wasn't three o'clock in the bloody morning and as if he hadn't been hammering on the door for the last five minutes praying desperately that the boy would answer and hoping furiously that Cheryl was as heavy a sleeper as he remembered.

"Hi Ste," Declan mumbled as he rubbed sleep out of his eyes, also obtusely ignoring the fact that he had been dragged from bed by his dad's ex-lover the night before he returned to Ireland for good. He stood aside to let the older man in. "You want a cup of tea or something?"

"Eh, yeah ok," Ste answered lightly, squeezing his way through the open door to the hushed flat. "Milk, no sugar."

He sat at the kitchen table while the boy rattled around the kitchen, not fully sure what he was doing here but enjoying the light whisper of wind on his face.

"Here ye go," Declan announced, plonking a milky mug of tea in front of Ste and collapsing into a chair beside him, dirty blond fringe falling into his eyes.

"Ta very much," Ste said.

He took a long, slow sip of the tea, waiting for Declan to ask him what the hell he was doing here in the dead of night drinking tea in the dark. Nothing came. Surreptitiously, he stole a glance at the boy and found him sitting, arms folded on the edge of the table with chin resting on top, apparently in no rush to end this strange companionship either.

"So, I hear you're leaving tomorrow," Ste broke the silence, eventually.

They boy's eyes flickered to him, flashing momentarily with something. Ste thought it almost looked like hope, but it was gone by the time Declan spoke.

"Yeah," he said, yawning tiredly. "Now that the doctors are happy and all. Nothin' much to hang around for, y'know."

"Right, course," Ste replied, quickly burying the gasp that wanted to escape in another gulp of tea. "We'll miss you though, us around here!"

As though she could sense the words through her slumber, Ste heard Cheryl's voice waft down the stairs, murmuring incoherently in her sleep. He froze for a second, suddenly picturing the scene if she woke to find him here, sat with Declan at three a.m.

"Listen, Declan," he hurried on, feeling time pressure now that the image of Cheryl's wrath loomed in the back of his mind. "You know your… your Dad."

"I hate him," Declan spat immediately. Ste literally jolted. It felt like electrocution.

"What? No. Declan–" The boy's eyes were black holes, his mouth a bunched up scowl, his hands curled into fists. No. No this couldn't happen. Not to Brendan. Stupidly, ridiculously, panic was rising like bile in Ste's throat. Brendan, who would take any punishment so his kids could be happy and safe. Brendan, who never had even a tiny chance to be happy and safe himself.

"I fucking hate him," Declan was hissing, venom oozing from his pores. "I could be hooked up to a machine for the rest of my life because of what he did, and he didn't even care enough to hang around and see if I would be."

"That weren't him Declan, that were Walker," Ste protested weakly, fighting back the acid threatening to erupt from his gut.

"He's a coward, that's what Aunty Cheryl said to Mam," Declan was deaf to Ste, his knuckles blanched white from the fury in his fists. "He's a shit brother, and a shit father, and a shit person."

"Declan, no!" Ste didn't know how his voice came out sounding like that, filled with quiet, commanding urgency. His insides were trembling. But his tone turned the boy's head momentarily. Again, Ste saw a flash of something, something vulnerable and innocent and beautiful. It lasted a second, proud fury screeching back in to his posture and expression, but the flash was enough for Ste.

He lunged. Roughly, he seized the boy's biceps and dug his nails into the bare flesh of his arms. Declan shock strangled his yell, furious face whispering fear as Ste pulled him nose-to-nose, forcing the boy to look straight into his eyes as he spoke.

"No, Declan, he's not. He's done shit things, yeah – to you, to me – but he's a good man. He don't believe that, Declan, but he is."

Declan was squirming, trying to wriggle out of Ste's grip. His eyes darted, trying to escape the heat of Ste's gaze, trying to cling on to the fury. Ste's fingers only tightened, he leaned in closer so the breath of truth would fall on the boy's skin.

"Me and you, Declan, we need to believe in him. Even if no one else does. Even if he don't believe in himself. Even if–" Ste heard a murmur of his trembling gut break in his voice, but he forced himself on "–even if we don't never see him again. It's up to me and you, Declan."

One incredible swaying instant, suddenly the furious pretend-man dissolved, now a child was dribbling beseeching, rattling sobs from his devastated face. His balled up fists were gone, now grappling fingers clung at the collar of Ste's jacket and the dirty blond hair was all Ste could see as the head buried itself in his tshirt, covering itself from the cruelty of the world. Ste found his vice grip loosening, his delicate hands wrapping themselves protectively around the crying child, stroking the dirty blond hair softly, murmuring soothing nothings into the quiet night. His own eyes were strangely dry, his heartbeat strangely steady. His insides didn't tremble anymore. For the first time in three months, he felt like he was exactly where he should be.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE: Year 2014 – Brendan**

Brendan's mouth is pressed against hot flesh. Salty sweat fills his nostrils. Slowly, he lets his lips part. He sucks, vacuuming taut skin into his wetness. Then his tongue, and his teeth, until he gets a whimper. He starts the journey down, a slick trail of saliva from arching neck to delicate collarbone to tight abdomen, thrusting his tongue into the navel so the acrid taste of sweat covers it. His fingers are scratching across the gentle grooves of ribs, following his wet mouth downwards on the back until they're digging into firm flesh of buttocks. Roughly, they're plunging into the hot, black cleft between to linger damply over the puckered entrance. His face tickles as it ploughs through coarse wires of hair until his chin is bumping long slick hardness. He turns his head, letting the hair on his face scratch against it. His tongue flickers out. From the sky, a pleasured moan fills his ears. Brendan lunges towards it, curling his tongue to the tip and letting his red lips open to a perfect circle and pushing on. The moan again. His twisting fingers leave their damp cave and join his face, pressing strokes to match his tongue, wanting more moans. More come. Then fractured gasps. The body is writhing, closer and closer. Brendan feels a moan spill from his own lips, erupting from deep inside. He needs to see. Urgently he climbs, leaving his expert hands to pump mounting pressure as his face rises to Stephen. Stephen, blue eyes rolled backwards, pink lips twitching out whimpers, body trembling and tensing twisted ecstasy. His fingers squeeze on, holding his breath, waiting for the euphoric tipping point. White heat slams him in the chest, bubbling in his oesophagus. It scalds his insides, rising gigantically. White hot rage. His hands have flown from the slick groin, his blanched knuckles are squeezed around the throat now, choking the gasps. The rolled eyes are down from the sky, fixed on Brendan, bulging and bloodshot with fear. Brendan struggles, unable to fill his own lungs properly, but his vice grip doesn't falter. The writhing pleasure is panicked struggle. Brendan's fingers tighten on the throat. Invisible hands tighten on his own neck as he does, squeezing the air from him, blocking the light from him, ending the world…

He woke with a gasp.

Coughing from the memory of squeezing hands, he sat up and blinked. Where was he? A blank cream wall stared at him, bare save for a single mahogany wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers. Where was the sleek metallic furniture of his bedroom? From the next room came a strange whirring noise. He couldn't attach that noise to anything in Cheryl's kitchen.

Then he remembered. It wasn't Cheryl's kitchen. It wasn't his bedroom. Not his old bedroom.

Two years since he turned his back on that tiny village, and still he went through this strange ritual disorientation every time he woke up. He barely remembered his departure. He had been so wrapped up in everything that had happened in the days before it – Cheryl's horrified face, Nana's pathetic apologies, the explosion, the engagement, Walker's terrifying attack, Declan's limp body, the charred wreck of the holiday home, Stephen's naked body, Stephen's hungry kisses, Stephen taking care of him… Standing in his neat bedroom in his sister's electrifying flat at four thirty in the morning, his mind barely glanced off the fact that he would never be back again. His heart had pummelled at him as he struggled to keep the searing heat of panic from burning his insides. He had stuffed whatever tailored suits and unnecessary gadgets he laid his blind hands on into a weekend bag, his imagination full of that perfect face crumpling as it looked at an empty fluorescent orange café, listened to the roar of an accelerating engine screech away from him.

"Hmmphf… Yea… What?" Amy's voice had been confused, sleep-addled, on the phone. "I mean, who is this? Hello?"

"Amy, it's Brendan," he had answered, phone rammed against his ear and eyes frantically watching the stretch of tarmac ahead as he drove too fast down the motorway.

"Brendan?" she asked, sounding more awake now but still confused. "Brendan Brady? Wha–"

"It's Stephen. He needs you. He's at an all-night café about three miles north of Southport. It's painted orange."

"Why, what have you done, Brendan? What's happened to Ste?" She was fully awake now, and her voice was brimming with fear and accusation.

"Don't think he has any money or anything with him. You need to get to him. Tonight."

"Brendan, if you've hurt–"

Brendan had hung up. The second he did, the phone lit up in his hand, jangling noisily with an incoming call. Stephen. Cheeky wicked grin, soft sculpted skin, gentle blue eyes, now a crumpled perfect face. He turned off his phone.

He hadn't even looked at what he was packing, shoving fistfuls of carefully ironed shirts into the bag wondering if Amy had reached him yet, wondering if he'd still be there when she did, wondering how many agonised and agonising voicemails he'd have to endure when he eventually turned his phone back on. He had just needed to get out of there, as fast as he could, away from everything. And as the bright blue door had clicked shut behind him for the very last time, it had never even occurred to him to say goodbye to the flat that had been home for over two years.

Maybe that's why he kept forgetting he had left, he thought now, as he swung his legs out of the bed and padded naked across the polished hardwood floor to the bathroom. The old-fashioned cistern was making the inexplicable whirring noise. With a sigh, he listened to the gush of water as he urinated into the bowl. That didn't explain the dreams though, did it? He wasn't having those intoxicating terrifying dreams of lust and fury because he hadn't said goodbye to the flat.

He gave one firm shake before flushing the toilet with its iron chain and padded back into the bedroom. He definitely wouldn't sleep now. The hands on the clock beside his bed told him it was five thirty a.m.

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"And what the fuck have you been up to, man?" Leo asked, his eyes greedy and excited.

"Just a little bit of business," Brendan told him. He watched water in the sink turn a dirty red as the blood disappeared from his hands. "Think our good friend Mr Dunne will be paying what he owes for that gear today."

"Fuck me, man, it's eight o'clock in the bloody morning," Leo cried, an incredulous laugh escaping. "Where d'ye get the energy from, man?"

Brendan shrugged. "You know me Leo, ever the early bird catching that proverbial worm."

"Well now you've eaten your worm, man, want to get some real breakfast?"

Brendan's stomach growled in reply and Leo barked out another laugh, throwing an affectionate arm on his. A little too affectionate, Brendan thought, shaking him off. Leo was nonplussed. As always.

They stepped out of Leo's boxy hardware store into the misty grey drizzle of Brendan's youth. They must have looked an odd pair, Brendan with his groomed moustache and designer suit, Leo with his shaved head and scruffy jeans. But they had always been an odd pair. Brendan remembered walking to school together when they were seven years old. He had towered over the other boy back then, feeling awkward and out-of-place in his oversized body and his shyness while Leo strutted along beside him making easy small-talk with whoever they met.

"Here, this is the place," Leo announced, stopping outside a greasy-looking café with dirty windows.

"Seriously?" Brendan peered through the grimy window at the even grimier table-tops. "I want breakfast not a venereal disease."

"Seriously, man," Leo assured him in his irritatingly upbeat way. "Best eggs and bacon in Dublin. Trust me."

"Well there's some bad advice," Brendan grumbled, but he followed the shorter man into the café nonetheless. "How do you even find these places?"

It had been exactly the same when they were kids, Brendan thought as he made his way across a floor that hadn't seen a mop in years. Leo finding some obscure adventure to embark upon and Brendan dragged along for the ride. Only he hadn't really been dragged along. He had gone willingly. Anything to escape the suffocating darkness in his living room, blanketing his incessantly weeping mother as she poured varying antidepressants into herself. Leo had known it too. He had been there the day Brendan found her, pink nighty soaked through with vomit, eyes rolled back in her head. He'd come to the hospital with them. The next day, he'd knocked in for Brendan, full of a new adventure and not mentioning anything from the day before. Brendan had always appreciated that.

"Full works, gorgeous," Leo was telling the fat, red-faced waitress with a cheeky wink. "And a cup of coffee."

"Yeah, the same," Brendan grunted, noting with distaste the thin layer of sweat that was already shining on the woman's forehead despite the early hour. He paid her with a crisp twenty euro note and was offered a grime-covered tenner in return.

"Keep it," he told her.

"Tipping big," Leo observed mischievously as they took a seat near the door. They always made a point of sitting near the door, wherever they went. He jerked his head in the direction of the woman at the till who was now digging something out of her ear with her finger. "You're in there, mate."

"Ha, ha! Funny!" Brendan bared his teeth in more of a snarl than a smile. "You're a funny guy."

Leo grinned wickedly back at him. In a matter of seconds, however, the humour faded from his face and his grey eyes became serious.

"Magsy was on to me this morning, Bren," he started, his voice low and one eye thrown towards the door. "Things are getting a bit heavy with the Westside crew now. They battered Jono, he's in the hospital. Magsy's crew, they need to do some damage now."

"Do they now?" Brendan enquired. Eyes glancing absently around, he took a long sip of water from a glass he was sure hadn't been washed since the café had opened in the early nineties. His tapped his foot impatiently under the table. "Well, since I'm not part of Magsy's crew, that's not really of concern to me, is it?"

"Bren, you're not being realistic," Leo reasoned. "You're moving too much gear now. You can't shift the amount of gear you're shifting and not expect the big boys to pay attention. If you're not with them, you're against them. That's how they'll see it."

"Is that how they'll see it, Leo?" Brendan asked, his eyes no longer combing the restaurant but locked on the other man's face, bulging slightly with the effort of keeping his voice quiet. "Or is that how Magsy does see it?"

"Bren," Leo started.

"Tell me, Leo," Brendan interrupted, his voice soft. "How do you see it?"

"Bren, I told you how it is," Leo held his hands up, refusing the argument. "I been in this game a long time, I been in this city a long time. Ain't many can say that, man, not in this business. I keep it friendly with the big boys, I keep myself small-time, and now and again I get my hands dirty as a favour to them."

"Hmm," Brendan said, cocking his head to the side. "But you enjoy doing those favours, don't you Leo?"

"Hey, we all like a little bit of excitement, man," Leo shrugged, the corners of his mouth pulling up a little. "But I don't do nothing for no reason. I do it coz it's smart to do it. I do it coz I wanna be around in another ten years."

"Yeah, maybe that's the difference between us," Brendan said, dropping his gaze for a second. He felt Leo's eyes on him, suspicious, and snapped his head back up. "I'm not one to do the smart thing, I mean."

"Look, man, we're old mates," Leo said. "I'm giving you good advice here. You do what you want. But if you're not going to fight with them then you need to be ready to fight against them when they come. And they will fuckin' come."

They were interrupted by the arrival of the food. The smell of it wafted to Brendan's nose, sending his stomach into frenzied growls again and wiping away all of his concerns about lurking bacteria.

"Ah, you're a star, love," Leo grinned at the overweight woman as she plonked the fry down in front of him. "An absolute star."

The two men ate hungrily, barely glancing at each other as they concentrated on cleaning their plates as quickly as possible. When they were done, Brendan gave a satisfied belch.

"Well there's no sense hanging around waiting for a smack," he commented, noting the way Leo's eyes lit up at the words. "What d'ye say you come catch a few worms with me before lunch, old friend? As a favour?"

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Brendan lay awake, staring at the high ceiling of his strange, unfamiliar bedroom. Beside him, Leo's naked figure was snoring gently. He felt sick remembering it. Shameful, dirty fucking. Brendan had to turn his face away from it even as it was happening, staring unseeing into the grey pillowcase as he buried his cock in Leo from behind, flapping sounds of flesh slapping against sweaty flesh and wet rhythmic grunts coming from his own mouth and Leo's to fill the bare room. When he came it was filthy and meagre and carnal and gone in a second so he filled up with hollowness and regret. The way sex always used to be. Before Stephen.

He climbed out of bed and slipped on tracksuit bottoms, padding his way into the small cold kitchen and to pour himself a Jameson. Three p.m., the little clock told him.

It was the adrenaline, he tried to rationalise. The glorious sense of power as they stood pointing the guns at Magsy's pleading figure, the horrific disgust at the sight of the crippled man pouring blood from his knees, the sudden terror at the distant sound of police sirens making them need to run. As they ran, they were suddenly sixteen again, sprinting from the foot-patrol that had caught them snapping wing mirrors off parked cars. He remembered that day vividly, the wild frenzied panic when they realised they'd been caught, the rhythmic pounding of their feet across tarmac and pavement and grass, the old abandoned shed they'd cowered in. It had been adrenaline that day too, Brendan had told himself that for years. Adrenaline had made him press his lips against the mouth of his gobby, bright-eyed friend. Adrenaline was what made Leo kiss him back, opening his wet mouth and pushing his pink tongue up into Brendan's. Their hands had clawed over each other's hair, neck, ears. Then Leo's fingers had crept to the bottom of Brendan's t-shirt, lifting it up. Suddenly, they weren't Leo's hands anymore. The hands were sweaty and warm with filthy groping fingers, the breath was putrid and suffocating, the lips were his father's.

All he could remember then was terrified, unholy rage. When it passed, Leo was lying on the floor in front of him, face already starting to swell, blood oozing from behind his ear, clutching his abdomen.

"I'm…" Brendan had started without finishing. Tears burned the back of his eyes but he had already learned by that age never to let anyone see him cry.

"Don't ever touch me, you fucking queer!" he had bellowed before turning and running from the abandoned shed, leaving the battered Leo. He had gone straight home, grabbed the stash of money he had accumulated through the small-time drug running they had done, and left.

His first flight, he thought mirthlessly. The first of many, it would turn out. Sixteen years old, with a wad of cash in his pocket, and the only place he could think of to go was Belfast. Where Cheryl was. Cheryl, impossibly warm and excited, hair the colour of sunshine, voice full of laughter. Even Brendan's mist of darkness couldn't withstand her vibrancy. She was the only person he cared about, the only person he knew who cared about him.

He downed his Jameson in one gulp and poured himself another.

It was six months before it had happened again. Before Lindsay's scrawny weed of a brother, the local poof, had advanced with eyes locked on his. Brendan had allowed him, fascinated by the taste of him, the smell of his Lynx deoderant. The hand was already pushing itself down into the front of his underwear when Brendan ripped himself away, horrified at the freak of nature that he was. How could this skinny boy excite him like this? Against nature. Against God.

Just like his father.

Eoghan's fingers had reached for him again, whispering that it was okay. When Brendan was finished, two of them were broken.

"Alright, man?" a voice came from behind him. It was followed by a greedy pair of hands, pawing their sweaty palms down his bare back where he stood leaning over the kitchen counter nursing his drink. Brendan tensed.

"Get out," he said, his voice low and even.

The hands dropped from his back.

"What?" Leo asked.

"I said," Brendan continued, swivelling on the spot to face the naked man. "Get. Out."

The confusion on Leo's face was turning into a slow-rising resentment.

"Listen, man, I did you a fucking favour today," he challenged.

"Yeah, thanks for that," Brendan dismissed him. He made a little swivel with his finger, indicating their two bodies. "But this, it shouldn't have happened."

"Gonna batter me again, are ye?"

Brendan paused. It was the first time it had been mentioned since he had shown up on the other man's doorstep two years ago. That was how they worked, him and Leo. Never picking at any scabs. After fourteen years, he'd knocked on the door of the man who he'd last left bleeding on the floor of an abandoned shed and been greeted like an old friend.

That might have been the reason he'd come to Dublin. Back to where it all began. Now that he didn't have Cheryl to run to anymore. He had remembered Leo's tireless enthusiasm, his unbeatable optimism. These were the things Brendan needed to soak up from other people, the things he wasn't capable of making for himself. Now that he had destroyed every life he had ever led, he crawled back to the place he had started, ready to stop pretending.

But Leo was different. He had greeted Brendan with the same enthusiasm, invited him into his business and life with the same optimism, but Brendan could see through the affable façade. It was in the eyes. The way they checked the exits whenever they walked into a room. The way they hardened as they calculated a situation. The way they shone with sadistic pleasure as they fired a bullet into Magsy's kneecap. It was like looking into a mirror. Probably it was his fault, Brendan thought, remembering the swollen face and terrified eyes of the eager adventurous sixteen-year-old boy that had looked up at him from the floor of that shed.

"No, Leo, I'm not," Brendan answered, hesitant. It was his fault, his necrotic malignant contamination. "I just… I didn't want this to happen. It felt like I was betraying… someone."

"Is that who you ran away from then?" Leo asked, shrewdly. His eyes were hard right now, Brendan noticed.

"Yeah… No… I mean, kind of," Brendan answered. This felt weird, speaking to Leo about something other than bacon or bullets. He tried to fight the instinct to tense up, to push his face menacingly into the other man's. "I needed to… take myself out of his life."

In case he ends up like you, Brendan thought, watching the cold calculation in the grey eyes. He couldn't imagine Stephen's gentle, emotive blue eyes looking at him like that. But he wouldn't have imagined Leo's like this, until he saw them.

"So now we know what you're running from," Leo went on. "But what are you running to?"

Brendan said nothing.

"Y'know, man, some people would say going after Magsy like that was a death sentence."

"Some people might, yeah," Brendan answered, his voice ice again. He didn't care what he owed Leo, this was not a conversation he was going to have. Anyway, what was the point? The damage was done, Leo was what he was. Just like Brendan. Necrotic, malignant, incurable. He picked up his Jameson and downed it in one gulp.

"Now, like I said. Get out."


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR: Year 2015 – Doug**

_**AN: Hey folks, I know this fic is pretty hard going, not many smiles so far… but I promise it is going somewhere, please hang in there! ;)**_

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"It's just, with the kids and all, Christmas is so busy…"

"Yeah, course."

"And there's the new deli. I mean, Christmas shoppers, they're the best customers you can get, aren't they? Wouldn't be a good start to go shutting up shop in the mentalist shopping week of the year, would it?"

"No, definitely."

"I mean, if I could, Doug, you know I would."

"Ste! It's fine, honestly. It was a stupid idea. The new deli, of course! You can't close it in Christmas week! And the kids, yeah."

"Doug, I'm sorry…"

"No, really. Don't worry. It's no problem."

"But…"

"Listen, Ste, I'm gonna have to go, okay? Leanne is decorating the deli for Christmas and if I don't stop her every inch of the ceiling is going to have mistletoe hanging from it."

"Well, okay, but maybe…"

"Leanne, not there! Sorry Ste, what was that? Listen, I really have to go, I'll call you later, okay? Leanne!"

Doug pressed a shaking finger to the keypad, deadening the call, and stared through the dark, empty shop to the sign he had swung around to say "CLOSED" before he made that call. Stupid idea. Stupid, stupid idea. He shook himself, trying to rid himself of the sound of that guilt-soaked voice as he pottered around, shutting things up for the day. So Ste wouldn't be visiting after all. So what? It was Christmas, for crying out loud! The whole village was in the festive spirit. Yesterday Tony Hutchinson had actually given out free a mince pie to anyone who bought an extra-large Mocha Frappachino in College Coffee! If that wasn't the modern day equivalent of "A Christmas Carol", Doug didn't know what was. What did it matter whether Ste Hay bothered to call down to Hollyoaks or not? He stamped his feet against the biting cold as he locked up the aqua-blue door of the little shop that he now ran on his own, purposely forbidding himself from thinking back to the first day he had pushed the brass key into this keyhole, the man next to him practically levitating with excitement. Why would anyone want a visit from their ex in the middle of all this festive cheer?

"Hey, watch where you're going!" a voice barked as Doug turned from the door directly into a moving body.

"Sorry, I didn't see…" the words died on his lips as he saw who he was apologising to. His mouth hardened.

"Well next time, maybe you should pay more attention," Joel Dexter breathed, pushing his nose right up against Doug's so he could feel the words on his face as well as hear them. "Douglas."

Maybe you shouldn't dress like someone from the goddamn Matrix and I might spot you in time, Doug wanted to shout in his face, but he didn't. He nodded, morosely, and eventually the hot breath spilling onto his skin moved away, the silently screaming eyes looked elsewhere. Doug watched him saunter over to the club and disappear into its depths with a clang of the metal doors. Like a goddamn fucking reincarnation.

Doug kicked roughly at the aqua-blue door that he had just locked.

That's why it all started to go wrong. Joel fucking Dexter. Doug had actually been glad when he returned to Hollyoaks four months ago. Not at first, obviously. At first, he couldn't care less about the stupid Scottish kid who'd followed Brendan Brady around like a bad smell a few years ago. Totally out of the realm of Doug's existence, nothing but a figure that passed by the deli window from time to time, occasionally wrapped around the peroxide, heel-clacking figure of Theresa McQueen. But his indifference had vanished three days after the Scotsman's reappearance when Cheryl Brady tumbled into their haven.

"Hi boys!" Cheryl had cooed, swinging open the door to the deli and spilling inside, shopping bags dripping from her arms.

"Hi Cheryl!" Ste had cooed back, matching the outrageous flirtation in her voice.

Doug laughed. They entertained them, the pair of them. The way they would bend their heads together, little and large, and gossip over the most mundane goings-on like old women at the bus stop. The way they would cackle raucously at each other's dirty jokes. Seeing them like that, it was easy to forget the awful six months when Ste's face paled every time he saw her, mouth clamping shut as if he was forcing himself not to spew. It had been long, the journey back to normality. Full days had passed when Doug believed that Ste's eyes would never be anything but faraway and deadened, that his touch would never be anything but terrified and desperate. Days when he believed that Ste and Cheryl's easy friendship was gone for good. But time healed, Doug had found, and slowly Ste could laugh again. Slowly, Doug didn't have to call his name a second time to pull him out of reverie and into present day. Slowly, cautiously, he and Cheryl smiled at each other again, then giggled at a clever quip, then gasped over a juicy piece of village scandal. That day when Cheryl breezed into their little sanctuary, Doug knew that Ste was almost whole again. And those scattered little moments when Doug happened upon him by chance, dead eyes back again and needing Doug to call repeatedly before he heard his voice, they would disappear forever, some day. Perhaps not soon, but some day. Doug would wait.

"Have I got a treat in store for you!" she squealed.

"Oh yeah?" Ste raised an eyebrow in mock-suspicion. "D'ya think we should be scared, Doug?"

"Definitely," Doug had nodded.

"Well, it's only your favourite events manager is throwing the most outrageously hands-down-fabulous party of the year! Tonight!"

"Really? Where?" Ste asked, seemingly enthusiastic but Doug could detect the hint of reluctance. Ste wasn't really into going out. Not anymore. Part of getting older, Doug supposed, though the thought of getting trashed on some complimentary cocktails still held a lot of appeal for him. Ste was obviously keen not to burst his friend's bubble, though. "What you got planned, male strippers and a beer fountain?"

"Trust me, love, if I had my way," Cheryl sighed. "But sadly, the party is for Joel, and for some reason he felt he needed to specifically tell me that he didn't want the place full of 'some greased-up chippendales'!"

"For Joel?!" Ste's lack of enthusiasm was less well hidden now. His dislike of the barman seemed to be rooted in some old run-in that Doug had a vague memory of hearing about. Nothing that really warranted the lifelong grudge Ste was determined to harbour against him. But that was the ridiculous beauty of Ste – the completely arbitrary, illogical opinions he clung to with an unbridled passion. "What ya throwing a party for 'im for?"

"To celebrating him and Theresa coming home!" Cheryl defended, still good-humoured. "And to celebrate him becoming sole owner of the club!"

"Woah! Sole owner?" Doug felt his heartbeat kick up a tiny notch. Did this mean what he thought? "How did that happen?"

"Well it seemed stupid for me to hang on to two per cent of the place when he owns ninety-eight per cent of it," Cheryl shrugged, looking back at Doug. She grinned suddenly. "Hey, don't worry, I made him promise that it'll still be 'ChezChez' – my name will live on!"

He owns ninety-eight per cent of it. Doug's mind was turning it over. Brendan had sold Joel his half. His last link to Hollyoaks.

Brendan Brady was gone for good. Erased. Forever.

"Cheryl, you better have some really camp cocktails lined up, because Ste and I will definitely be at that party," he beamed at the bouncing blonde before him.

Maybe if he hadn't been so wrapped up in his own elation, he would have registered his boyfriend's sudden silence. Maybe he would have turned around and examined his face and seen the screaming abyss that he was falling into at that moment. But it was a flicker, gone before a second hand ticked past on the clock. When Doug turned around, Ste was grinning impishly back at him.

He waited a few weeks before he did it. To make it less obvious to Ste, maybe. Or maybe just to convince himself that he hadn't been waiting for that, for Brendan to finally be wiped away. Whatever the reason, three weeks passed between Cheryl's unconscious bombshell and Doug kneeling in front of Ste on the floor of the deli, exactly as he had three years ago almost to the day.

The plan had been born that night, in the hazy heat and fuzz of cocktail-induced drunkenness that made him stare at Ste's sculpted face, his familiar fidgety frame, his soft eyes and pink lips messy from the alcohol and filling Doug up with wonder and awe and affection. It was something that had been brushed aside when he came home to find Ste in that shrivelled up state, ragged nail-bitten fingers barely clinging to the ledge. Doug had done what was needed, had gently clung to his wrists to stop him from falling into the abyss, had slowly helped him climb his way back up. Whatever innocent promises and plans had been made in the weeks before were like forgotten ghosts or fairytales, meaningless and unimportant. As three years took Ste along the slow road back towards wholeness, Doug just walked alongside him, never pushing or hurrying, never trying to drag those ghosts and fairytales back into consciousness. But in the liquor-lazy ardour of ChezChez that night, Doug's heart told him it was time.

"You two seem to be getting on well," Joel had said to him that night when Ste went to the bathroom. Doug had been surprised. He and Joel had never really spoken much before.

"Yeah…" he slurred, hazily. A faint smile floated on his lips. "We are."

"I suppose that's good," Joel mused. There was something in the way he said it, something suggesting that he didn't think it was all that good at all, but Doug was too drunk to pinpoint it.

"Yeah, yeah it's good!" he agreed with the words spoken, ignoring the undertone that he couldn't place. He couldn't be bothered with hidden meanings tonight. He was fuzzy and hopeful and happy. "He's almost okay now, you know. We're going to be okay."

Joel sighed, heavy and tired and filled with something sad. Doug could see his eyes following Theresa from across the room. They were gentle when they looked at her, a momentary pause in the silent screaming that they seemed to be full of since he'd come back.

"That's good, too," he told Doug before he moved away. "One of them should be."

Of course, the conversation had slipped out of Doug's memory as soon as Ste's vivid face reappeared, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, shouting something in his ear about the row Mitzeee and Mercedes were having outside the girls' toilet. Doug was barely listening to the words because all he could hear was the almost-carefree, almost-happy, almost-normal voice bouncing over consonants and vowels. Almost okay.

Afterwards, the truth had crashed around him like a tidal wave.

"Will you marry me?" the red words beamed down from the wall behind the glass counter as he unveiled them dramatically three weeks later, laughing and bright, just like last time. Familiar and strange.

"So will you?" he'd asked, barely keeping the tremble of excitement from his voice as he squeezed the words out.

Ste's silence thrilled him for the first few seconds as he drank in the shock on the other man's face with delighted anticipation. The tidal wave started crashing about three seconds before Ste's mouth opened to answer.

"I love you, Doug, you know that I do," he mumbled, his shaking voice barely above a whisper, blue eyes sinking to the shiny sparkling floor. "But I can't promise forever."

Doug felt it suddenly. After three years, he had become numb to it, almost forgetting that it was there. But suddenly the ragged steel knife that sat in his gut, the one that had been lunged into him as he burst into that tiny flat to profess love and apologies and met the shrivelled up shell of the man he loved, the one who's intermittent little jabs he had ignored as he struggled to support the heavy weight of his friend, suddenly it twisted agony into him.

Almost okay. It meant not okay. Fleeting flashes of dead eyes and faraway mind showered his memory. Less frequent. Better hidden. Still there.

Ste was still speaking, floored eyes not seeing the silent gasp on Doug's face.

"You know I can't, Doug," he whispered, shame dribbling from his eyes in big wet tears and falling onto the untarnished floor beneath him. "Just in case."

Just in case.

Doug could feel a dull throb in his left foot now from where he had kicked against the aqua-blue door. Just in case. What a goddamn waste. Maybe if the memory of that hope – that excitement, pushing the little brass key into the lock the very first day – maybe if it didn't still flush his body with warmth like this then he wouldn't have tried so hard to pretend, cupping his hands around the empty air and telling himself that it hadn't leaked away. Maybe he would have been relieved that one of them had finally said it, that the ridiculous game was finished. Maybe the relief he had seen in Ste's face as he realised that he didn't need to pretend anymore wouldn't have hurt so much. Maybe he wouldn't be haunted by the sheer shitty honesty of those words: just in case.

He stamped his feet against the cold and the memory, trying to haul himself back to present day, to the icy footpaths and twinkling fairy-lights and the wafting chatter and music spilling from the Dog around the corner. He pulled his phone from his pocket, Ste's number still glaring up at him from the screen as the last number dialled. Firmly, he hit "Cancel". A few more taps of the keypad had him scrolling through his phonebook to find the number for the loud-mouthed gregarious Liverpudlian that Leanne had introduced him not-so-subtly to last week.

"Hey, Andy?" he said, pressing the phone up to his ear in the deserted street. "It's Doug – Doug Carter. Listen, looks like my friend won't be visiting this week after all, so if you still wanted to get that drink?"

What the hell did he have to lose?


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE: Year 2016 – Cheryl**

_**AN: Thanks for sticking with this fic, guys! It's a slow burner, but it's going to get exciting, I promise!**_

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"These? Are you having a laugh?"

Eoghan Nolan was holding up a pair of leopard print leggings with the word "SEXY" splashed vertically down the thigh in hot pink lettering.

"Oi!" Cheryl pouted. "They're one of my favourite pairs of leggings! I used to wear them all the time when ChezChez first opened, y'know. Thought they looked kind of French…"

"Jesus, Chez, you sure you're not mixing France up with a Jedward video?"

"YOU are supposed to be helping me, not giving a running commentary on my wardrobe, thanks very much!"

She seized the gaudy lycra from his hand and shoved them into the cardboard box she was packing, a scowl painted across the lips that were actually struggling not to grin. Really, she felt like laughing out loud. Really, she felt like throwing her arms around her friend and pouring out her thanks to him for doing this with her, for sensing when she spoke to him on the phone last week that this was something she couldn't do on her own.

Leaving Hollyoaks. Jesus, when the first fledglings of the decision formed in her mind two weeks ago, this day had loomed terrifying before her. She had imagined packing up this flat swarmed by memories of Lindsay, of Malachy. Eoghan must have heard it in her voice, that small grating fear that once she stepped away from the village she would lose them all over again. The next morning he was on her doorstep, hair unkempt from the uncomfortable aeroplane seat, covering her in a hug that filled her up with Belfast and reminded her that the memories of her dead friends weren't limited to Hollyoaks.

There was only one person's memory she'd be leaving behind completely, and she supposed that was probably a good thing. Probably.

"For the love of Christ, Chez, you can't seriously intend to wear these things ever again?" Eoghan was demanding now, holding a pair of neon-orange earmuffs between his thumb and index finger as if he didn't want to contaminate himself by allowing too much of his skin to contact them. "People will think your hair is on fire!"

"'Those things' happen to be all the rage on the ski slopes!"

"Planning on skiing a lot back in Belfast then, are you?"

Again, Cheryl yanked the offending item from his grasp and shoved it in her own cardboard box. This really wasn't turning out to be the most effective way of packing, but she didn't care. At least she wasn't worrying about forgetting about that person she didn't want to remember.

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"Okay, Brady, the first thing we're doing when we get in there is three jagermeister shots each," Eoghan was telling her firmly, arm slung around her shoulder as they skipped down the steps from her soon-to-be ex-flat later that evening, her whole disorganised life safely crammed into a neat stack of boxes in the living room.

Cheryl barked out a laugh.

"Eoghan, it's the local pub," she told him. "I'm not sure Jack Osbourne even knows what jagermeister is."

"Irrelevant!" he dismissed her. "In case you hadn't heard, this leaving party is for The Cheryl Brady. She has a certain reputation to uphold. If I don't end up dragging you in the front door of that flat at six a.m. with one of your shoes missing then you're a failure. We need to give the people what they want!"

"Tongues will always be wagging, so might as well give them something to wag about!" Cheryl quoted her mother, impishly. "Let's get four shots to start!"

"That's the spirit!"

The street was quiet, daytime over and night-time waiting to begin. Cheryl glanced at the locked-up deli as they came to the bottom of the steps, feeling a little whisper of the regret that she'd been staving off all afternoon.

"You okay, Chez?" Eoghan had noticed the little flicker on her face. Why was she so bad at hiding? Definitely not a family failing.

"Yeah, fine!" she brushed away his concern. When Eoghan had swallowed her up in that bear hug on the doorstep the morning he arrived, she had spilled out her worry and sadness about Lindsay, Malachay, Steph, Gilly… All the people she had loved here and had been forced to say goodbye to. All the people she was terrified she would forget. But she hadn't mentioned him. She'd kept him crammed in that little box at the very back of her mind where he'd been for the last four years, refusing to examine or acknowledge how she felt. She wasn't going to let a glimpse of some stupid little deli open that box, was she?

Eoghan hated him, she knew that. Why, she wasn't sure, but that was nothing unusual. Her life in Belfast had been littered with people who her brother hated and who hated him for some undisclosed reason. Cheryl had learned early on not to try and understand it or reconcile it. He was who he was and the world was his enemy, but that was irrelevant to her.

That day in early November was still vivid in her memory, stomping home from school following a world-ending fight after her so-called best friend Lindsay had been cast as Mary in the Christmas pageant – the part Cheryl had been coveting for weeks – when a rough hand had closed around her arm and yanked her into a dark little alley lined with wheelie-bins.

"Brendan!" she had gasped, looking up into the familiar light-blue eyes flecked with darkness and the anxious, furrowed brow. What on earth was he doing here?!

His brow relaxed a little, his eyes softening. His mouth curled up slightly at the edges into an amused smile. As if the sight of Cheryl's surprised face made some of his worries fade away, as if she distracted him from whatever serious thoughts had been flitting through his head. He had always been like that in the holiday home too, whenever she and Nana would return from some girls' shopping trip to town. She would scour the beach to find him, usually wrapped up in a little ball hugging his knees with his face scrunched up into something serious. And she'd shout "Brendan" excitedly, triumphant delight at finally having found him, and watch his face relax a tiny bit, see his lips bend into a gentle, grateful smile. Seeing him here, in Belfast, was steeped in the surreal, two dichotomous parts of her life were mashing into one. But she still felt that warm glow, knowing that she was his cure for whatever dark thoughts were flitting through his brain right now.

Cheryl had listened, dumbstruck, as he haltingly told her that he'd left his home, asked her to help him. Her response had been instant and unequivocal. Absolutely. Of course, part of it was probably vanity. She, who lived life in Belfast as an only child and watching with envy as Lindsay and Eoghan squabbled and bickered and bought packets of Pastilles for each other if they found fifty pence on the ground. She, who hungered to be thought of as the brightest, the prettiest, the most special person in the room. Of course she wanted Brendan here, looking at her like she was a lifebuoy he could cling onto, fiercely protective of her as he dismissed the rest of the world as unworthy. But it wasn't just vanity.

She knew why his brow was so furrowed, why his eyes were flecked with black. Her father had told her one evening, as she curled up into his lap on the sofa, Prime Time flickering on the television in the background as always.

"Why is Brendan so sad, Daddy?"

It was a question she had wanted to ask for years but never had. She wasn't even sure why she asked it that night. It was a few days after their return from the holiday home, a few days since she'd hugged goodbye to her thirteen-year-old brother and somehow been hit by the weight of how broken-in-half he seemed. A little bit more every year.

Her Dad had looked shocked by the question. Shocked and afraid. Immediately, she regretted asking, wished she could reach out her hand and grab the words that were floating the air before her to pull them back in. But she couldn't so she sat holding her breath, bracing herself for what she was going to be told.

"His… his Mam has depression," Dad had told her, his eyes flitting to the television, not meeting hers. "She's very upset a lot of the time. That's hard… that must be hard for Brendan to live with. He must worry about her. About making her feel better."

Cheryl's heart was pounding in the back of her throat. She could feel tears sting in her eyes but she couldn't let them out, not yet.

"Is that why he's always so angry with you, Dad?" she whispered, nervous but desperate to know.

Her Dad's eyes stopped flitting now, they swung to her and locked themselves there, silent and pleading and desperate and guilty and absolutely terrified.

"I suppose so," he croaked. The words sounded dead, unfeeling and untrue, but Cheryl could see him fighting to keep the tremble out of his lips. His eyes were still locked on hers, asking her for some sort of futile forgiveness. "I suppose he never forgave me for leaving."

She slid off his lap and sat beside him on the couch, breaking out of that suffocating gaze. Gingerly, she patted him on his trembling knee.

"It's okay, Daddy," she whispered. "I'll always look after him."

Those words, that whispered promise, floated through her mind now as she stood in front of the aqua-blue door of the little deli on the Main Street of Hollyoaks Village, so far from the noisy bustling streets of Belfast City. She had looked after him. For fourteen years she had defended him wholeheartedly against his countless enemies. For fourteen years she had forgiven him for all his awful crimes. Hadn't she stood over the unmoving body of her father, knocked out cold by Brendan's fist, and run a comforting hand across her brother's back before she called the ambulance? Hadn't she watched Ste Hay throw himself at the feet of the man he loved, seen his small defenceless body trampled on, and she had squeezed her brother's shoulder and asked him if he was okay? Hadn't she ignored, with deliberate obtuseness, the innumerate charges, the blaring accusation that he was not a man at all but a monster?

But they had been right. All the other people had been right and Cheryl alone had been the stupid fool to believe in him for so long.

"Honestly, I'm fine," she told Eoghan, forcefully upbeat. This was stupid. Ste wasn't even here anymore, he had moved on. Like Brendan had. Like Cheryl was about to. Standing staring at a locked-up deli that used to mean something was ridiculous.

But as they rounded the corner of the steps her gaze met the club, bright pink lettering still shouting "ChezChez" into the advancing night. She felt that whisper again, hissing through her consciousness. Ste wasn't the only other person who had believed in him, she thought. There was somebody else.

She didn't pause to examine why she was doing it – the see-sawing emotion of the last two weeks, the enormous sense of failure at breaking her promise to her Dad and herself, the sheer exhaustion of trying to keep that little box in the back of her mind crammed shut for four years – she just followed impulse.

"You go ahead to the Dog, Eoghan," she said firmly. "I just need to run to the club for a minute."

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The club was deserted. Around her, heavy thumping electro pumped into the empty air, making her feel even more out-of-place in this barren space, slowly making her way up the metal staircase in the middle of the floor.

Out-of-place. That's how she felt here, in this club singing her name in pink letters to the night sky.

When Joel had first returned to the village, announcing that Brendan had sold him the other half of the club, Cheryl had been thrilled. She saw the future, her club, the one that shouted out her name, back to the packed excited hub it had been, back to all its former glory. She gushed at the idea, insisting that Joel keep the name that she had dreamt up six years ago. Joel had laughed at her and shrugged his shoulders and promised that as long as he was here ChezChez would be ChezChez and Cheryl would always be a guest-of-honour.

But that was before she began to understand. It started with little things. A glimpse of a scrunched up fist with knuckles raw from contact. An overheard phone conversation with an acid voice pouring hissing threats into the receiver. A sudden, unguarded turn of the head that showed black-flecked eyes screaming in terror at her. Everything about it so sickeningly familiar. Everything so suddenly strange. Everything that she thought her club, her life, had represented peeled back to show the grotesque truth that had always been there but she had been too vain or too obstinate or too devoted to acknowledge.

Asking him to change the name then seemed overdramatic. Nothing had changed, after all. It was still the dark, infected place it had always been. She had just realised it now. So instead, she let it be, let her name glare out into the sky above that den of horror as a symbol of her own foolish naïvity, and backed away from it and from the chilling reincarnation of her brother that prowled inside it. Today, climbing the metal staircase to his office, was the first time she'd steps inside these walls in over a year.

"Um, h-hello?" she said nervously, prodding the metal door further open to reveal the crown of a black head of hair bent over the desk, closely studying something on a sheet of paper in front of him. The head flew up immediately, eyes flashing warily at the unexpected intrusion, once more shocking her with the silent scream that lived in them. They softened when the landed on her though. Something else chillingly familiar.

"Cheryl!" he said, his voice surprised but welcoming, half-rising from his seat in awkward greeting. "Come in! Sit down! What can I do ya for?"

"Oh, um, thanks," she said, taking a small step forward but still hovering near the door. "I just… I just wanted to let you know… I mean, you've probably heard already… I'm leaving Hollyoaks. For good. Tomorrow."

He fell back down onto his seat, eyes still carefully examining her face.

"Yeah, Theresa told me," he said, voice measured. Still trying to figure out why she was here, Cheryl presumed.

"Yeah, well, my Dad is sick," Cheryl rushed. The words felt so familiar to her now, she had given this explanation so many times to so many people over the last two weeks. "Lung cancer. It's not operable. He still has some time left though – a year, maybe two. I need to be there for him now."

Nothing keeping me here, she could have added, but she didn't.

Joel's eyes were still glued to her face, expression still unreadable.

"I'm sorry, Cheryl. Really. I hope you're okay."

Cheryl shrugged off the condolence, again something she had become used to over the last two weeks. This wasn't why she was here, to get meaningless words of sympathy from the boy who dragged out crashing emotions from the back of her mind.

"Could you tell him, Joel?" she said softly. "Just… just let him know that Dad is sick? I think… he should know."

Joel's face didn't flicker. Four years ago, she would have pitied him. She would have wanted to wrap her arms around him and whisper reassurances to those screaming eyes. She knew where those screams had come from. She had been screaming them herself ever since she had walked into that abandoned shed and found Brendan spattered in the dead flesh of Joel's stepfather, hacking through the corpse with the hands he used to hold hers with as a kid. But now she understood. Whispered reassurances couldn't save anyone.

She turned, ready to run from this black fortress now her message was delivered, when he spoke.

"He did it for me, Cheryl," he said, a pleading note in his voice that made her stop and turn back to him. "He was trying to help me."

"That's the worst thing about it," she answered. The image was running on repeat inside her head, spilled out of that little box since she'd steppe into the club. "He did… that… and thought he was doing something good."

Joel dropped his eyes from her face, fixed them blindly on the sheet of paper he had dropped to the desk when she walked in.

"Y'know, I still see him," he breathed, voice barely audible. "Mick. I still dream about… him. His skull was smashed in at the back. Flat. Like a Coconut Cream. From where… y'know…"

Cheryl's chest felt tight. She wanted to leave now, to get out here and away from this, but it was like her feet were Sellotaped to the floor, like her eyes were pulled by invisible magnets in the direction of the pale boy in front of her whispering his nightmare.

"I'm sorry…" she started.

"No, Cheryl, it's okay," he shook it off. "It happened. I live with it. Just like a lot of things."

"Yeah, but…"

"Theresa," he interrupted, eyes swinging back up to meet hers. "She gets it. She gets me. She gets me through them, the dreams."

Cheryl nodded, mute. Somebody was hugging him and whispering reassurances into his ear. She was glad about that. Even if they would change nothing, in the end.

"He needs someone to do that for him," Joel said, softly. "Before he's lost completely."

Cheryl almost staggered at the words, the request.

"Joel, I… can't," she choked.

"He won't let anybody else, Cheryl," Joel pressed on. "He's wrapped himself up, just sleeping 'til it's over. You could save him."

She wanted to cover her ears with her hands, to shout "La! La! La!" at the top her voice to block him out like she used to when she was a kid. He didn't understand! She had tried! She had tried again and again and again and again and still she walked into that shed and found him steeped in evil that she couldn't even think of without her stomach churning bile. She had tried and she had failed. Failed her father. Failed her brother. Failed herself.

"I have to go to Belfast," she answered, struggling to keep the tremor out of her voice. "My Dad, he needs me. That's where I need to be now."

Joel didn't reply but his unuttered response floated in the air of that tiny office. Brendan needs you too.

"I tried, Joel," she said, swallowing her sob. "There's no saving him."


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX: Year 2017 – Amy**

An urgent, pressured clicking. A stuttered crack. Sudden blinding flash of blue electricity and then a smell of burning.

"Shit!" Amy shrieked, dropping the hairdryer loudly onto the floor and yanking the plug out of the wall quickly. Shit, what was she going to do now?

"Ames, have you seen me red tie?" Lee was barrelling into the room, his fingers clumsily fighting with shirt buttons, Simpson-themed boxers blaring out beneath the white cotton. "I can't find it anywhere, don't tell me you put it in the wash, did ya?"

"What?" she answered vaguely, still focused on the lifeless hairdryer and the dripping water from her head. What the hell was she going to do?

"My tie, Amy! I need it!"

"Ugh, I don't know, Lee!" she cried, head snapping up to meet his urgent expectation. "Can't you just wear that blue… hey, can you smell burning?"

"Muuuuuuum! I think the fish fingers are burning!" Leah's bored yell was wafting up the stairs.

Jesus Christ.

"Well turn off the grill then, Leah!" she hollered back, running out to the landing as fast as her towel and her seven-month-pregnant figure would allow, poking her head over the bannister. No response. "Leah?!"

A long pause.

"Yeah, alright, alright. It's off," the defensive response came. "But I'm not eating these, they're all black!"

"Amy, me tie!" Lee had followed her out to the hall landing and was hovering at her side helplessly. "It's for the 'power outfit', i'nt it? You know, red tie, white shirt, navy suit… I'll look like a pushover if I wear a blue tie."

"Oh for Christ's sake," she muttered, spinning around and sending drips flying from her soaking hair as she stomped back into the bedroom. "Look, it must be in one of these piles of washing, you look through that one there."

She dived into the closest mound of freshly-laundered clothes that should have been put away that morning but Lucas had spilled his cornflakes all over the floor and Leah had announced that she needed six cans of beans to bring into school for a charity food hamper and she was late for work for the third day in a row as it was. How the hell was she going to get her hair dry in twenty minutes, she wondered as she sent clothes flying in her frantic search for the tie. Maybe Mrs Henderson next door had a hairdryer she could borrow? Did seventy-year-old women even own hairdryers?

"Why would you wash it?" Lee was whining, head buried in the pile of neatly folded laundry that he was decimating so that all she could see was Homer Simpson's baffled face staring up at her from his backside. It would have made her laugh if her head wasn't saturated, and her kids' dinner wasn't charred relics of breaded fish, and the washing she had spent two hours ironing the night before wasn't now strewn about their bedroom like a tornado had swung by. "It wasn't even dirty."

"Well I don't know if I did, Lee!" she said through gritted teeth. "But we might as well start somewhere!"

"E-ya, aren't you supposed to be getting ready for this work do?"

The voice was familiar, a mix of flatness and gentleness, wrapping itself around her shoulders and giving her a comforting squeeze. Ste.

Yeah, Ste. About bloody time. He should have been here a half hour ago. What the hell time did he call this, then?

Her head flew up from her own pile of washing, found him leaning a shoulder against the doorframe, his hands already wrapped around a mug of steaming tea he had evidently helped himself to as he watched the pair of them tear the room apart.

"What time do you call this?" she snapped.

"Sorry, work," he answered by way of unapologetic explanation. Then, examining her appraisingly: "Your hair's all wet, Ames."

She clenched.

Lee's head was poking up from his pile of laundry now too, peering over at her.

"Hey, yeah Amy, it is," he told her, nodding in agreement with Ste's shrewd observation. "You better get a wriggle on, we've to leave in twenty minutes."

How tempting would it be to smack their two heads together right now?

"Well the hairdryer broke," she barked. "And the fish fingers burned. But apparently none of that matters 'cause Lee can't find his red tie."

"You mean the red tie that our Lucas has tied around his head right now?" Ste asked, a slow grin spreading across his face.

A strangled, triumphant yell erupted from Lee, and he shot from the room, Homer's face disappearing in a streak of bright yellow. Amy fell back on her hunkers, frantic search done with and the wreckage of its wake covering the scene.

"Think 'e's pretending to be an Indian or summat," Ste mused. He took a few small steps into the room and held the steaming mug of tea out towards her. "Here, thought ya might need this when I saw those fish fingers downstairs."

She felt it again, that warm squeeze of comfort around her shoulders, and she let it linger there this time, sinking to sit on the bed as she took the mug from him and felt the warmth leak into her fingertips through the ceramic.

"It's not always like this, y'know," she sighed, leaning into him as he sank down onto the bed beside her and wrapped a real arm around her shoulders. "Sorry about the mess."

"I know it's not," Ste answered. She knew he was drinking it in, the crashing chaos of family. Like he always did, like it was a television programme he was watching. "You're dead lucky, aren't ya?"

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"Sshhhh," she was whispering, struggling to hold in the giggle that wanted to burst from her lips at Lee wrapping his arms around her giant belly while she struggled to get them both through the front door.

"I can't help it, you're irresistible Mrs Hunter," he wiggled his eyebrows in an attempt at seduction and she couldn't silence the laughter that exploded from her this time.

"Shush," he chastised her, nuzzling her neck in a very un-chastising manner. "You'll wake the kids."

"Lee," she whispered, poking him gently in the ribs to extract herself. "Can you control yourself for five minutes, we're still in the doorway y'know!"

"No, can't do it," he moaned, but he pulled off her enough to let her shut the front door and then collapsed towards the living room heavily, 'power tie' askew.

Amy shook her head, still impishly fighting against the giddy smile that wanted to spread itself all over her face until it reached her ears, and followed him into the front room. Ste was there, television flickering on benignly.

"E-ya, good night then?" he enquired, expression mildly disapproving as he drank in Lee's stumbling gait and floppy crash onto the couch while his pregnant wife trudged into the room behind him. "Did everyone love your red tie, then?"

"Her," Lee was slurring, pointing a wavering finger in Amy's direction as she fit herself onto the couch between the two of them, Ste budging up a little to make space for her larger-than-usual frame. "Everyone loved her. Because she's amazing. Ah… maze… eee…"

The last syllable was swallowed up in a gentle snore. Ste and Amy continued looking at him for a moment, waiting to see whether he'd go on, but instead he gave a loud snort and a little sigh and settled into the heavy, steady breathing pace of committed sleep. Ste guffawed.

"And they say romance is dead, eh?"

"Ste," Amy grumbled, elbowing him playfully in the ribs, still finding it difficult not to set the room on fire with the brightness of her grin. "It was a great night, actually. Really great."

Ste reached out and took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together in that way that felt like home.

"Good," he said firmly. "I'm glad for ya. I mean–" he threw a wry glance at Lee's snoring body "–'e might not be exactly who I woulda picked for ya, right… But I'm glad that you're 'appy."

"Yeah, I know," she told him. She gave the fingers laced through hers a little squeeze. "Hey, thanks for babysitting tonight."

"No problem. Weren't like I had nothing better to do, was it?"

He said it as a joke, words dipped in that flat Mancunian tone, louder than the soft voice he had used a few moments before. And it wasn't any revelation. Years had been passing by, one after the other. His strange observing existence had become normality by now.

But tonight, with pulses of love and happiness still coursing wildly through her veins, she felt suddenly struck by the barrenness of the words.

She struggled to keep the worry out of her expression, to keep her voice light and airy and nosy as she asked. "So, what about you? Anyone on the scene I should know about?"

"Naw, not really," he said, shrugging off the enquiry. Closed. The way he was now. She concentrated on the feeling of his fingers, entwined in her own. At least they were there, even they were only trying to look after her.

"You know, there's this teacher at work," she said, the voice still light and airy, the eyes glancing only furtively at his silhouette, wanting to see the reaction. "He's dead nice, and proper fit. Could invite you both round for dinner some evening maybe, introduce you?"

His fingers were loosening from her grasp now, pulling away and moving to his head to run and uncomfortable hand through his hair.

"Naw, you're okay, Ames," he was mumbling, face fixed intently on the flickering TV. "I mean, thanks and all, but y'know… I mean, the deli and everything… I 'aven't really got time, y'know."

"Yeah, of course," she whispered back. "The deli."

They fell into silence, both faces glued devoutly to the television, watching some American teenager fight with his American father about the high school American football team and Amy's hand felt cold and empty and all she could think about was how six years ago she would have been wheedling and whining and not-taking-no-for-an-answer as she forced Ste into facing what he was really doing and why he was doing it. But now she was dumb. She was dumb and paralysed and powerless against this walled-up man who would do nothing but press his nose against the window and peer through at life as it went on around him. Two years ago, could she have done something then? When Ste showed up on her doorstep at seven o'clock in the evening, soaked through from his rainy walk from the bus station, raw-red eyes the only indication that the water on his face wasn't only rain.

"It's over," he had sniffed, eyes dry and dead as though all the tears had been cried out on the journey here already. "Me and Doug, we're finished."

"Ste, what happened?" she had whispered back, feeling like she already knew the answer but hoping that she'd get a different one.

"He found out that I'm broken in half."

Maybe then, maybe there, sitting in her haphazard kitchen with caressing mugs of tea, that was when she could have cleaved him open and tried to tidy up the mess. But he needed time to heal, she thought. Time before she ran her nails over old wounds and opened them up again. By the time she saw the half-life he was living, the empty shell existence, she couldn't get in. Her best friend, ridiculous and passionate and emotional and argumentative was gone, locked inside a brick tower with no door to get in or out, just pressing his face up against the window to watch.

"Maybe my dreams aren't the same as yours Dad, but don't I have a right to dream my own?" the American teenager was demanding of his father and Ste was glancing over at Amy with a derisive eye-roll when his face wrinkled up into concern.

"Ames, what's the matter?" he was asking, eyes flying frantically from her face to her bump and back again and only now did she realise that her cheeks were covered in hot tears because she knew exactly why all of this had happened and exactly who had locked her beautiful friend in that brick tower and thrown away the key. When she spoke, her voice was frayed and staccato, thick with two years of watching this.

"It's been years, Ste. You have to let go of him. Everything he's done to you… All the times he hurt you, Ste… And he's still hurting you now, when he's not even here."

Ste's face twisted, mashed up in an indecipherable mess and Amy held her breath because somehow, he was open. Somehow, her unconscious tears had leaked into the foundations of his brick tower and shifted the walls a tiny inch. Somehow, she was peeping through a tiny crack and she was afraid that even exhaling would cause it to seal back up and never reappear.

His eyes were roving over the floor, travelling to Lee's snoring figure, falling back to her swollen belly as his lips stretched and shrank and tried to land on what he needed to tell her, his body leaning forward and taut like a bow. Eventually, one tense swaying breath-held moment, and he slumped back onto the couch, loose like jelly.

He coughed the words out, like they almost choked him. Desolate, unadorned honesty.

"You don't get it, Ames. He's in my bones."

Her tears were thick and fast now, flowing rivers down her face as she pressed it against the tiny crack she had made to see through and feeling her heart ache at what she saw. No scabs anymore. Scars. Blanched, deforming, awful scars knit grotesquely into the fibre of him. Nothing that her scratching nails could pick away at, could pull apart to put him back together again. Silently, she laced her fingers back through his and leaned into his body, pressing all the warmth she could against that tiny crack, willing it to seep through. It was all she could do.


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN: Year 2018 – Declan**

Declan shifted his shoulders slightly, adjusting to the heavy weight resting on them and gripping his hand firmly around the edge of the coffin before they started down the aisle, away from the candlelit alter. His Aunty Cheryl's sobs were echoing through the church, mixing with the soft violin music as they bounced off the stone walls. He could see his little brother snuffling out a few quiet sobs beside her too. Poor kid. This was his first funeral.

Declan's own eyes were dry. The cold, rigid wood of the box was knocking oddly against that sticky-out bone of his shoulder as their slow procession moved. He had never carried a coffin before. It was weird, when he thought about it – his Granddad's corpse a couple of inches away from his face, separated only by a plank of wood. Was it moving around in there? Sliding a centimetre to the left or to the right as the six of them moved unevenly, six sets of different shoulders shifting up and down with unequal footfalls.

His grandfather had been a nice man. The bit he knew of him anyway. He remembered being a kid, seven or eight, and climbing onto his lap for a hug at some family function and finding his fist wrapped around a twenty pound note as he climbed down. Twenty pounds! When the greatest thing you dreamed of buying was a Premier League sticker-book, twenty pounds might as well have been a million. He'd shown it to Paddy later – just a glimpse, "see with your eyes, not with your hands" – and his brother's eyes had widened so much that Declan could see a full circle of the white bit. Paddy had missed out that day, yanked away by Dad before he had a chance to climb on Granddad's lap himself.

It had been a nice service, too. The priest had told a few stories about him, talked about the fundraising he'd done for St. Anne's parish centre, about the way he used to donate three bottles of whiskey as prizes for the Christmas raffle every year. Declan sat in the pew with his sniffling aunty and brother and step-grandmother, listening to the priest tell the congregation about a kind, honest, friendly man called Seamus Brady, and knew that his eyes probably should be misting over at the words, that he should feel some sense of loss or sadness.

But weirdly, his head was full of Da instead. His mind was seeing Da hover hawk-like on the few occasions when he or Paddy had met Granddad when they were young. It was hearing him arguing with Mam, telling her point blank that they would not be taking up the invitation to Sunday lunch in Granddad's pub, not this Sunday, not any Sunday. His eyes were watching Da, face slapped with a smile that didn't make it all the way to the eyes as his white-knuckled hand rose up and down, shaking Granddad's in necessary greeting.

The church was rammed full. Granddad's pub had been the area's local since he opened it in the eighties, after he'd moved to Belfast with Cheryl's mam, and Granddad had been the life and soul of the place from what Declan had been told over the last few months. Mam had brought him and Paddy to visit the man a lot in the last few weeks, as he slowly got frailer and frailer, and each time there seemed to be another old punter there, ruffling Paddy's hair and shaking Declan's hand in some awkward gesture of condolence and then decompressing the sombre mood with a story about the shenanigans they used to get up to in the good oul' days.

They'd all turned out in force today, anyway, lining themselves up into orderly pews, donned in respectful black, bent heads muttering prayers for his soul at the priest's command. Maybe that was why Declan's eyes were still dry, that was why he didn't really feel sad for the lifeless body in the box on his shoulder. Granddad already had enough people on his side. Da didn't. Da needed Declan to be on his side.

Someone had explained that to him, once.

These were the thoughts flitting through his strangely untroubled mind as he carried his grandfather's remains on their final journey, through the swirling sound of sobs and violin strings. His eyes glanced curiously around at the throngs of people, watching as they bowed their heads and blessed themselves with a little inaudible whisper as the procession passed. They must not all be able to see the aisle, Declan mused. Did it ripple through then, the passing of the coffin, like a Mexican wave? Is that how they all knew, even the people stuck in the corners, when to do that odd little dance, bending their necks and throwing their hands up into the sign of the cross? He craned his neck, trying to see the people at the back. Were they watching him, or were they just watching whoever was standing beside them for their cue?

And that's when he saw him. In the last pew, a few spaces apart from the nearest mourner, shoulders hunched and sunk low like a man trying to go unnoticed. His face was angled to the floor, gaze transfixed by it. Not completely visible, but enough to be sure. It was him. Declan felt his heart buck-leap against his ribcage. Da. Da was here, right here. Suddenly, his casual observances and idle musings were over. His heart was hammering. The procession was moving painfully slow and Declan just wanted to sprint to the door and fling the box towards the hearse so he could leave this parade and go to his father, but they were moving too fast now and another step had Da's face obscured completely by the sea of Lemming mourners and Declan wanted to crash to a halt and make the whole procession reverse a few paces so he could double check it again and make sure he hadn't imagined the whole thing. Cheryl's sobs were wracking on and on and Declan had to fight the urge to whirl around, spinning the dead man one-eighty above his head and shout, "He's here, Aunty Cheryl! He's here! Da is here!"

The air outside was biting cold but Declan couldn't even feel it. Impatiently, he shuffled the last few paces with the other men, and awkwardly and ridiculously lowered the coffin with them so they could slide it forward into the big car full of chopped flowers. He didn't even wait to see the boot close on it, he'd spun around and was pushing past his weeping family to get back to the entrance of the building. People were starting to pour out of it now, the wide double door thick with bodies spilling into the winter afternoon. Declan threw himself against the tide, pushing and shoving ungraciously, uncaring of the mutters of shock directed at him. He staggered his way inside, to the spot he had seen his father from, still battling against the steady stream of mourners flowing past him. He was gone. Declan's stomach lurched. The drill of his heart inside his chest felt dangerously like it might crack through his ribcage now. No. He couldn't be gone. Where could he have gone to, with all these bodies in the way? He had been right there, a few minutes ago. Just a few minutes, tops.

Declan spun on the spot and was back throwing himself into the sea of people again, swimming through them to get back out to the air, batting away condolences like missiles. No way. No way could he be gone already. Where the fuck was he?

For the second time, he burst into the crisp November sunshine and didn't feel the cold. His eyes scanned the crowds, frantic. All he could see was black and grey and pale faces muttering nothing. Where was he? His Mam was over with Cheryl and Paddy now, wrapping an arm around his little brother. The undertakers were at the door of the hearse, talking quietly to each other. The crowd was spilling out, reaching as far as the gates of the church, conversation getting louder and a little more cheerful.

Suddenly, he caught it. A glimpse, a tiny phantom of a dark suit and a grey-flecked head of brown hair disappearing out the pedestrian gate at the side, dipped down like it didn't want to be seen. Declan bolted, running now, only vaguely aware of his mother's cry behind him, "Declan! Where are you going?!"

He skidded out the pedestrian gate and rounded the corner he'd seen the phantom disappear behind. The sight hit him like a sock in the stomach. Five metres away, that was it.

"Da!" he shouted, his voice coming out louder than even he had expected. Like six years of not saying the word had layered itself up, each day it had been unspoken adding a decibel to its volume now.

Da stopped. Slowly, he turned on the spot where he was until he was facing Declan.

He looked tired, Declan thought. Jaded. The weighted lids hanging half-shut over screaming eyes, the heavy-etched lines of his face that seemed to drag the corners of his mouth down. Unbidden, the flash of memory brought those rumours to the fore, the pieced-together information fed by newspaper articles that named no names and hushed whispers that filled in the blanks. Drugs. Murder. Gangland war. He batted them away, dragging to mind the advice he had been given once. The advice he had clung desperately to for six years.

Now, standing face-to-face, Declan wasn't sure what to do. He was too old for tears now. Too old to run to him and throw his arms around him in a hug, begging for affection or recognition. Six years had passed. Declan was a man now.

Da wasn't doing anything. He was just standing, watching, waiting for Declan to decide what was going to happen here. Letting him decide. Declan fought a tiny swell of panic.

"Do… do you want to go for a pint, Da?" he asked, eventually.

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"So it's a bit more intense now, the training," Declan was saying, one hand wrapped around a pint of Carlsberg as he leaned back into the cushioned lounge-seat. "Which is grand for the minute but next year is final year so I'll have to hit the books a bit, might cut back on the rowing then I suppose."

They were sitting in Flaherty's, a quiet little snug that Declan had been in only once before. It had taken them about twenty minutes to walk to it, but that was one of the reasons Declan chose it. Less likely to run into someone from the past, he figured. He was guessing that wasn't something Da would have liked.

As they entered the darkened lounge, Dad had grunted at him, asking him what he wanted to drink. Declan tried to keep his voice normal as he answered, tried to keep the incredible surreal sensation that was engulfing him out of his reply. It was up to him to keep the ball in the air, he sensed that. Da just seemed so tired, like he wouldn't have the energy to even think about doing this if Declan didn't guide him through.

Da had come down from the bar, a pint in either hand, and lowered himself into the seat opposite Declan. A moment of silence descended, tremendous and pressing and full of a thousand unspoken questions and answers from both of them, to both of them. Declan almost felt his father's heartbeat through that moment, felt his throat close and his inside tremble against the weight of it. That weight, when he already looked so tired.

So Declan started talking. He talked about everything. He talked about the Engineering degree he was doing in Queen's. He talked about making the second rowing team this year. He talked about Anna, the girl he was sort-of seeing for the last few months and how she was trying to get him to go visit her family over Christmas but he'd rather chew off his own arm than spend his Christmas holidays on a farm in Derry trying to make a good impression on a bunch of country hicks.

He spoke about Paddy, describing how he'd announced dramatically at the breakfast table one morning that he was planning to break the world record for the shortest time to eat three cream crackers that afternoon, about the horror on Mam's face as her living room filled with neighbours and well-wishers and the world-record-man and even a bloke from the local paper come three p.m., about the nonchalant grinning shrug from Paddy as he missed the time by over two seconds and cheekily told the gathered crowd that it'd been a bit of a long shot anyway.

He told him about Aunty Cheryl, about how she'd started seeing Eoghan Nolan, Lindsay's brother who owned the cocktail bar, but Declan wasn't so sure about him because he seemed a bit put on.

He talked on and on and on, gently disintegrating the tension of that moment until he knew Da wasn't quivering under its weight anymore.

"I'm glad, Deccy. Declan," Da spoke, suddenly, interrupting Declan as he explained how he was trying to talk Paddy out of his new and excessively irritating passion for drumming. His voice sounded hoarse, thick and stodgy from disuse. He coughed, awkwardly aware of it. "I'm glad you're… you're okay."

Declan's tirade of information ground to a halt. Da's eyes were on the table top, examining the cardboard coaster he had been fiddling with at the beginning, but every few seconds they'd fly furtively to Declan's face, wanting something from him. It made Declan feel like he was being asked some question, like Da was waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, course," he said, gently. Of course he was okay. Why wouldn't he be okay? But what about Da? Da wasn't okay! He was shrivelled and black and lost and Declan wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he could see the blue of his eyes again, but he didn't. The crippling weight of the first moment might be gone, but this was still delicate, still fragile.

"Yeah, course," Dad echoed, shifting needlessly in his seat, black eyes still darting to Declan's face every few seconds. "Just… It's just I was worried, y'know, that you… that I might've messed you up, when I left. That you might think I didn't, y'know… care."

He stopped moving as he said the last word, grew still and raised his head and threw his gaze full force at Declan so he almost toppled, almost dropped that delicate, fragile ball. They were full of that question, that unuttered and terrified question, and Declan could hear it now: do you hate me for fucking it up?

"I did, for a bit," Declan said softly, after a pause. He was responding to the words Da had spoken but both men knew the question he was answering. He swallowed, trying not to let the wince on Da's face deter him. He needed him to understand, to know that Declan was on his side. Had always been on his side, no matter what, for six years. "But then I got it. I get it. Ste explained it to me."

"Stephen?" Da dragged the name through his lips, more inhalation than exhalation. His eyes were gone again, darting around the room like he needed to find the exit, but his body leaned further forward like he needed more from his son. Declan drank in the reaction. It was almost visceral. Unexpectedly, he found himself remembering Ste, pupils dilated and cheeks flushed pink with adrenaline, choking on his own words. "Even if… even if we don't never see him again. It's up to me and you, Declan." Had Ste ever seen Da again? Had Da ever gone back there, back to Hollyoaks, back to the place where his eyes were the lightest Declan had ever seen them?

"Yeah, Ste Hay," he said. Dad's eyes were flying now, like they were on some rotator blade, and Declan could feel that breakable ball dangerously slipping against his fingertips, but suddenly he didn't care. Suddenly, this felt more important. "He came to see me, before I came back to Belfast. I was angry, y'know. Really angry. At you. But he told me… he made me see, you're a good man, y'know. And that it's up to me and him, to keep believing that, 'cause nobody else will. Even you."

The moment was back, pressing its suffocating weight onto the tiny lounge table, but Declan didn't try to dissolve it with idle chatter this time. He sat, watching his father take in the truth, that Ste and Declan believed in him, that Declan was okay, that he would make sure that Paddy was okay as well.

And in that quiet little pub on that frosty November afternoon, Declan watched as Da's face crumpled like cardboard and his sigh shuddered like the wind and he started to cry.


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER EIGHT: 2019 – Ste**

Ste Hay was sitting on a small settee in a one-bedroomed flat in East Manchester. His eyes were following a busty TV presenter as she donned a safety helmet and some overalls in preparation for a bungee jump.

His mind was paying no attention to her girlish whimpers, though. Instead, it was rehashing the phone conversation he had just had.

So Doug was engaged. He had apologised before he said it – "Listen, I'm sorry Ste… Me and Andy, we're getting married."

Maybe Doug should be sorry. Maybe that was the normal thing to say, when you were telling your single ex about your new fiancé. Maybe Ste should be feeling hurt, angry, lonely.

But he wasn't. Obviously. He wasn't feeling anything at all.

Logically, he supposed it was good news. Doug was a good person. A kind person. A person who had kept Ste anchored for three years when he could have left him to drift off into empty space. If Doug was happy, then that must be a good thing.

Of course, he wasn't looking forward to telling Amy. He had spent the last three weeks trying to talk her out of the "surprise" thirtieth birthday party she was dying to throw for him. News of Doug's happiness was guaranteed to spur her on into more frenzied efforts. And, naturally, there would be the oh-so-innocent attempts to pry into his non-existent love life. He could hold her at bay for a bit with the tale of the drunken fumble with Pannard's supply man at the Christmas party, maybe. If he left out the part where he'd balked and run out of the place when Ger suggested "meeting up sometime".

In truth, Amy's nagging was not what was playing on his mind as he watched the TV presenter's boobs get squashed into a harness. Nor was news of the engagement. It was what came after that revelation.

"Yeah, I mean, the wedding probably won't be for a while. We're thinking early 2021, actually."

Ste had made general noises of agreement, not entirely sure what responses were expected of him.

"But once we do tie the knot, we're thinking of moving back home. My home I mean. Stateside."

The implication took a few minutes to settle in. Stateside. Doug meant moving to America. Leaving Hollyoaks.

Closing Hollyoaks' Carter and Hay.

After that, the appeasing noises were a bit harder to make. Ste was straining to the end of the phonecall, struggling with the polite interest. When a deep Liverpudlian voice called Doug's name from the background ending their conversation, Ste had immediately flicked on the television and found the most brain-dead, colourful programmed he could to fill the silence of his tiny flat.

It was pointless though. Even as the noise and light of the TV washed over his hunched frame, his mind was reeling with it.

He'd stay in the Manchester branch, obviously. His kids were here. His kids. The thing that had kept him from floating away ever since Doug hadn't been able to anymore. The thing that let him press his nose up against the glass of that sunny world he'd tried to walk in once. For them, he pretended to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, to shiver in the January breeze, to smile at the smell of a flower. For them, he pretended everything did not taste like plastic. For them, he pretended that the bright, colourful world they lived in wasn't marred by the scratching of a soundtrack and wavering blue transmission lines. Without them, he'd float away.

But selling the Hollyoaks branch. His last link to that place. His last link to…

This was stupid. He clambered to his feet, expertly balancing his TV dinnerplate in one hand as he turned up the volume of the now-sobbing presenter with the other, so he could hear her shrieks from the kitchen. He elbowed the light-switch as he walked, flooding the cramped little room with light, and dumped the plate and cutlery into a beige basin in the sink.

"One… Two… Three… ARRRRRGGGHHHHH!" the television was screaming as he watched the basin fill with hot sudsy water from the tap. He had a dishwasher, bought at Amy's insistence that he spend some money on himself instead of pouring all of it into a nest egg for the kids, but it seemed pointless using it with only him in the place. All the dishes would be dirty before he even got around to turning it on, so he wound up fishing plates out of it and washing them at the sink anyway. Besides, he didn't really mind washing dishes. It was kind of cathartic, the sort of mindless necessary ritual that kept minutes ticking by, filling up hours, filling up days.

When he was done with his plate and knife and fork and glass, he tipped the basin over and watched the barely-dirty water disappear down the plughole. He then set about emptying the washing machine that he had left whirring with a white wash before he sat down to eat. The TV presenter was gushing now, laughing triumphantly at her glorious achievement, tinkling voice swelling through Ste's flat. Methodically he rifled through the pile of washing, separating the mangled ball of clothes and draping them neatly over the waiting clothes-horse in the middle of the living room. He preferred that to tumble-drying, though the machine he had could do both.

He slouched back into the kitchen to fiddle with the heating, timing the water to heat for his shower tomorrow morning before work. Then he wandered into the bathroom and squeezed a dollop of toothpaste onto a brush, scrubbing at his teeth for a minute or two before rinsing and spitting. He peed into the toilet and flushed it away, then stripped down to his boxers, folding his clothes from the day neatly on a chair beside his bed. Only once everything was done did he meander back into the living room, filled with the soapy smell of drying clothes, and turn off the television.

He crept back into his bedroom and slipped between the cold sheets, resting his head on the shapeless pillow, feeling silence leak around him.

The club belonged to Joel now, he reminded himself. And Cheryl had gone back to Ireland, Doug had told him. The past was the gone. He lay with his eyes open on his pillow for a long time before he fell asleep that night, staring into the distance. Watching the next sixty years of existence stretching ahead of him.

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**AN: Just to warn you all, rating is probably going to change to M from the next chapter onwards… **

**Also, just wondering what people think of the character "Leo" (from Chapter 3) – like/dislike/indifferent? Want to see more of him/less of him? Trying to decide exactly where to take this fic…**


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER NINE: 2020 – Brendan**

_**AN: This is a pretty long one!**_

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He was too late.

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Brendan was pissed. More than pissed. He was ready to kick somebody's fucking head in right now, and he knew exactly who's fucking head that would be.

"Where is he?" he snarled.

Leo just laughed back at him and Brendan bit down hard on the back of his gums. Bouncing off the fucking walls, naturally. He could smell flesh in the air before it even happened. Well, Brendan wasn't in the mood for Leo's shits and giggles.

"I said where the fuck is he, Leo!" It wasn't a question anymore. Brendan was pissed with Leo too. He was meant to be the one that kept this shit off Brendan's radar, that dealt with it quickly and cleaned up the mess after.

But it was on Brendan's radar now.

"Through here, boss," Leo gave him, cheeky bollocks, fucking regal wave to guide him through the hardware store to the pokey room at the back where your man was sat. Crying, for Jesus's sake. Crying. Were there no fucking men left in the world?

"Why are you crying, Jim?" Brendan asked, teeth clenched as tight as his fists as he drank in the floored eyes and face already swelling from the fight getting him here. He'd be curled up into the fucking foetal position if his arms weren't reefed behind him by the handcuffs. "Aw, is it because you're ginger? Are ye afraid the girls won't fancy ye?"

Leo was practically jumping up and down now, loving this, Bishop Brady going to work like the good ol' days. Brendan wanted to give him a sock in the fucking stomach, but he held back.

"Ye know, Jimmy, there's all sorts of hair products available nowadays," he continued, raising his hand to scratch a finger to his moustache, letting the snivelling cunt get a glimpse of the Colt45 in it. "Just coz you're born a ginge minge doesn't mean ye need to stay that way."

He moved as he spoke and bent down, nose to nose with the quivering runt, forcing those shit-brown eyes to look at the throbbing vein in his temple, smell the sweat on his forehead.

"Course, the girls, they'll find out when they look down, won't they?" he breathed, jerking the barrel of the gun into his crotch so he bucked.

"No, Brendan, please!" Course, he found his voice now. Once the family jewels were in danger. Brendan smirked. "I swear, Brendan–" his tongue darted out, wetting his lips to help him beg "–I swear, man, it wasn't me took that money."

"Doesn't really matter, kid," Brendan shrugged, pushing the gun harder into his balls. "You were looking after it. It goes missing, it's on you!"

"Please…" It was whimpering now. Enough to make Brendan wrinkle up his nose. He lifted the gun and smacked it hard against the kid's skull, drawing blood and dazing him enough to shut up that fucking tirade of whinging for a second or two. And if felt good. He lifted his hand again and slammed it onto the same spot, knocking his head sideways. Fuck yeah. Again, he lifted and he slammed and the head rolled. Again…

Brendan became vaguely aware of a vibration suddenly. His phone. He paused, hand and gun mid-air, fishing it out.

"DECLAN CALLING…"

Huh.

"Here," he said to Leo, shoving the gun into his hand as he spun on the spot. "Gotta take this." A glance towards his right-hand-man before he strode out into the shop and slammed the windowed door behind him. Cold, calculating eyes trying to figure out who was calling. Brendan met them with a poker face and nodded towards the reeling scobe. "Don't kill him."

He let a second pass by, slowing his heart rate, dissipating the adrenaline. Then he answered.

"Declan!" he said, voice forced.

He still couldn't get used to this. Two years and he couldn't get used to that weird jolt in his stomach when he heard his son's voice, coated in that iridescent hope. Messed up.

"Hey Da!" Declan had got used to it right away. Or was good at faking it. "You busy?"

"Ah, no, not really," Brendan answered, eyes watching through the frosted glass in the door as Leo's hazy outline started focusing fists on the stomach, slamming them rhythmically until the kid was straining against the cuffs to bend double. "Just a work meeting."

"Right, yeah." Declan didn't pry. "Listen, I was wondering if you'd be free on Saturday for dinner maybe?"

Brendan felt his stomach flutter. What the fuck was wrong with him? Palpitations because his son wanted to eat dinner with him?

"Yeah, yeah, sounds good…" he started, but Declan interrupted.

"Aunty Cheryl is going to come too."

Brendan couldn't say anything then, no matter how much practice he'd had forcing his voice with Declan. Cheryl. Jesus. Every time he saw her face in his mind it was twisted into that screaming horror, a bloody Halloween mask from nine years ago. When she found him over Mick's body. And that was back when murder still meant something. Back when he actually knew the names of the people he killed. He was watching Leo's outline, now back at the face, shiny slick red covering pasty skin and Leo's right hand covered in both. Would she see it, Cheryl? Would she look at his face and just know that he didn't deserve one drop of the forgiveness he wanted nine years ago? He licked his lips and dragged in a breath. He knew the answer.

"Right, I see, grand," he finally found his voice, thick and mangled and nine years heavy. Cheryl. That screaming judgement. He couldn't look at it again. "Actually Declan, this Saturday, it's not good for me. Work thing, can't get out of it. I'll have to go now, son. Gotta get back to this meeting."

He'd have his Judgement Day eventually, and he'd be truly fucked then. Why bother with the preview?

"But…" Declan was saying.

Brendan hung up on him. He didn't give himself a second for any wiry little thoughts to muscle their way into consciousness then, just reefed open the heavy door, roared inside and seized an arm to drag it upwards, cuffs and chair and all, right up to his face so he could almost taste the tangy metal of the blood covering the half-conscious head.

"GET ME MY FUCKING MONEY! ROB A BANK, PIMP OUT YOUR SLUT OF A GIRLFRIEND, I DON'T GIVE A SHIT! JUST GET ME MY FUCKING MONEY, YOU GINGER CUNT!"

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"We're gonna need at least two outside, man," Leo was saying, low urgent tones soothing Brendan's nerves. He preferred Leo like this, quiet and calm and ruthlessly planning. None of that giddy heat-of-the-moment bullshit. His grey eyes were bright but that grimy sheen of excited sweat was missing, the weird battle-fuelled adrenaline that made him and Brendan do stupid things.

"Me and Banner can do it," a voice growled from the corner. Brendan's eyes flickered to him, face unmoving. Mattie. Quiet. Forgettable. But a long scar running from under his eyelid to his jaw that said to Brendan he forgot nothing.

"Naw, Banner can, but I'll need you with me," Leo shook his head. Brendan trained his gaze on Mattie, gauging the reaction. A second's widening eyes, then back to stone. That was what promotion felt like, son.

Brendan fingered the whiskey glass on the table in front of him as he listened, hearing Leo pouring Brendan's plan into the eager ears of the top ranks. He let Leo do the talking, mostly. Orchestrated at first – the less he spoke, the more impact when he did – but by now it was as natural the rain and the clouds. He sat and listened and watched and knew before anything happened which one was going to snort a few lines on the job and which one was going to tell his mot the whole story and which one was going to fuck it all up. Like that ginger muppet.

"The Bishop needs this one to go well, lads," Leo was saying, voice grave but Brendan could almost see the fucking smirk around his lips. Leo loved that one. It was a Sunday morning it appeared in the paper, a fuzzy shot of him walking out of Sunday Mass and the caption "Bishop Brady: drug lord prays as two more die in gangland feud". Brendan had been livid, ready to find that bollocks of a photographer and make him say some fucking prayers, but Leo had been all over it with a big sloppy grin smacked on that deadly face. Publicity, he called it. Glory.

"Your name's at every fuckin' breakfast table, man, and don't worry, they got nothing on ye that'll stick."

Yeah, yeah, all fun and games for Leo. Brendan didn't want his name at every fucking breakfast table. Some of those breakfast tables belonged to people he knew. Used to know.

It faded out of the papers as soon as it faded in. He kept things dull as drying paint for a few months. And he stopped going to fucking Mass. What was the point, anyway? But Leo kept it up, using it to fuel the fear. Brendan unintentionally helped him along, his reckless couldn't-give-a-fuck approach to everything that left them all thinking there was something unhinged there – where was the greed? Where was the lust? Where was the hungry struggle for control?

Turned out, nothing frightened other men more than a man who didn't give a shit what happened to him. Ironic, really. Fourteen years of struggling for dominance, desperate to be kingpin, and when he quit giving a flying fuck suddenly the world bowed down. Bishop Brady, it said.

Still, Brendan didn't like the name. His furtive eyes were still watching Leo's newest next-in-line. He was thin. Everything about him. Long, thin face. Hard, thin mouth. Hunched, thin shoulders. Someone who'd spent his life foraging for scraps. Not impressed by "Bishop". Good.

There was someone banging on the shop door, loud and unapologetic. Leo fell silent. Brendan tensed. Seven faces leaning over the round table turned to him.

"Bren?" Leo asked, and Brendan could hear the dribble of worry in it. It almost made him smile, that sloppy little fear.

"It's your shop, mate," he retaliated, shrugging back in his chair. Leo hesitated a minute then heaved himself up to stride out into the dusty store. Brendan stayed reclined, but gave the steely bulge at his waistband a calculated stroke and knew that seven heads were seeing him do it and getting the message: this interruption was unexpected. Be ready.

He could hear Leo rattling with locks and bolts, could imagine them slipping a little bit on that awkward one at the top, and he let his hand trail up underneath his shirt so his fingers grazed the cold metal of the trigger.

"We're closed," he heard, gruff and barking and knew that fangs were being shown with the words. Enough to make some pleb change their mind about buying that tin of fucking paint after all.

"I'm… I'm looking for Brendan Brady, d'ye know him?"

Brendan knew that voice.

Fuck.

He was out of his chair and in that shop so fast he must have left a trail of fucking dust behind him. The back of Leo's head, hanging out the door into the darkening evening, obscuring the intruder from Brendan's view. Drinking in all the details, Brendan knew.

"Deccy!" he snapped, pushing roughly past Leo to the dirty blond hair and light eyes and sheepish grin. "What the fu… what are ye doing here?"

Fuck.

Seven filthy hands stroking seven hidden weapons a few metres behind him. Who cared why he was here, he needed to get the hell away.

Declan was opening his mouth but Brendan's hand was flat in the middle of his chest pushing him backwards into the street, throwing his weight into it as well so the two of them toppled out.

He could feel Leo behind him, those dead grey eyes peering over his shoulder to see the boy.

"All okay Bren?" he asked, innocent as the fucking Milky Bar kid, raking over Brendan's son like he was a sweet to be unwrapped. "What ye got here, then?"

"Fuck off, Leo," he said, low and menacing, as if the bolstered threat was ever going to work.

"Well, we can't go on without the Bishop, can we?" Leo slid Brendan's growl off his back easily, wet gaze still slithering over Declan. "Don't tell me you're mixing a bit of business and pleasure, Bren? You like 'em young, don't ye?"

Brendan's whole body was trembling now and if Declan wasn't there, Leo'd be floored right now, choking up at him like he had from the ground of that fucking shed. Instead he stepped up to the cocky prick, chest to chest, peering down, and breathed onto him.

"Leonard, get the fuck back into that room if you want to be around in another ten minutes."

He got the intent this time. Leo was a smart shit, after all. He was gone, hands up in surrender, slinking back inside with "okay, okay, take your time – I'll run over the details with the lads" and Brendan could feel his pulse slowing now the immediate danger was gone, but fuck, Leo must know now. Nine years of watching Brendan being afraid of fucking nothing and now he'd know it was a lie. He was a smart shit, after all.

"Who was that?" Declan was giving it, but Brendan just needed to get them the hell away from there now and was barrelling him across the street and tripping over his own feet and Declan's as they made towards the canal and trying not to think about the trip he'd made down this street with Leo a few hours ago, Jim's unconscious weight bundled between them making him all hot and bothered and knowing that he'd fuck him when he got back to the store.

"Why are you here, Declan?" Brendan asked when he finally felt the silence of the canal around them. Sharper than he meant it but not even close to sharp enough.

Declan dropped his gaze.

"Well, uh, we got cut off earlier…" He was shifting from one leg to the other. Nervous. "I just thought maybe you'd had a chance to think about Saturday?"

Again that stupid stomach flip. Jesus. But then, maybe that was because his son had just been one crummy store length away from seven murdering bastards. And was still face-to-face with one.

"I can't come, Declan, I told ye."

"Why don't you want to see her, Da? She's ready to talk, y'know. Meet her half way. Please."

Talk. What a bloody joke. About what, the last nine years? It was better leave her thinking he was a monster than let her see he was the actual fucking Devil. He just shook his head and watched the swans waddling awkwardly around the grassy banks.

"You're a coward, Da," Declan said suddenly, and Brendan was so taken aback by it, by the sheer fucking truth of the words, that he laughed out loud.

"Yeah," he agreed. Absolutely spot on. Bullseye. And Declan didn't know the half of it. "Why d'ye say that?"

"Because you're afraid to meet her, aren't ye?" he accused.

Brendan sighed, mirth leaking rapidly away, and suddenly the whole thing just felt too heavy. He didn't even know why he went to that fucking funeral. What did he expect to see? Some strange parallel existence floating above the chapel like a cloud? Some alternate world where Brendan wasn't diseased by what had been done to a little boy, where he hadn't rolled himself in dirt for twenty years until his mind became the black filthy place it was in this one? He saw nothing. He felt nothing. Just sat, squeezed into the back row of the little church, watching the faceless box bob its way down the aisle, and it was just a meagre pointless end to a story that he knew so well it bored him to tears, a story that had been over since the first day Nana and Cheryl had gone into town for an afternoon's shopping and left him at home with that man. Even Cheryl's noisy sobs or the sight of Declan's broad shoulders and earnest, serious face couldn't muster any flicker of emotion. As soon as the throng started towards the exit, he slipped through the side door and started back towards his zombie existence to wade through day after day 'til the finish.

The next moments had seemed like a dream. Declan, his face round and eager and hopeful. How was there hope in those eyes? Brendan was mesmerised. Heart-dead slaughtering zombie, cowed and stumbling over sentences at the feet of his own son. I was afraid, he told him. And then Declan told him who had built the protective little wall around his son's hope. Stephen. Brendan's heart, asleep for nine years, stuttered back to life.

But now… Now it was too much, too heavy. Declan was saved, and Brendan was so glad, but that was as far as this could go. Declan shouldn't be yanking on his collar like this, trying to pull him out of the brine.

"There's no point, Declan," he said, trying to push the yanking hands away. "All the stuff that made her hate me, it's still there. It's worse."

Declan shook his head. Unbelievable. Wouldn't let Brendan just sink into the cesspit he'd been falling through for nine fucking years.

"No, Da, you're a good man," he banged on. This again. This stupid made-up story. A ripple of irritation ran across Brendan's shoulders. "I know you don't believe it. But we do, me and Ste–"

A flash of anger now.

"Shut the fuck up about Stephen, Declan," he was barking, half-subconscious the way he stepped forward and got up in his face. "The two of you, great pals… You know fuck all about him, ye hear me?"

But Declan wasn't a kid now. He was a man, and he was ballsy, and he squared up to Brendan's pushing stance and the swans ruffled a little bit like they were watching. Declan's voice was hard and unafraid.

"I know he left Doug."

Again, unwantedly, Brendan's heart stuttered a few ragged beats. What? When? No, that couldn't be right. It couldn't be right because Brendan had a copy of the Chester Gazette under his mattress from three months ago with Stephen and Douglas smiling out from page seven holding a "Small Business of the Year" award between them. They'd expanded, apparently. Opened a Manchester branch. Brendan had spent a lot of hours staring at page seven and eventually had stuffed it under his bed like a fucking teenage girl because he… Because, well, he just had.

"No he didn't!" he snapped at his son, but his voice was diluted now. This couldn't be right. Could it? The whole thing was so fucking heavy he just wanted to fall down under it, to slide away on his belly and roll in the dirt that he was used to. Why did he even go to that funeral? Even as a dead man his Da could drag a fucking rake across his soul.

"He did." Declan's voice was clear and confident and deadly. "Years ago. Before Aunty Cheryl moved back home. Doug came to see her, really upset, and told her it'd all been pretending. He asked Ste to marry him, see, and he said he couldn't… Just in case."

Brendan was gone after that. A split second, a half breath, and the face pushed up against his son had disappeared and he was legging it back to those seven men with their hard thin faces and their seven guns. Back to where he was safe. Because all this shit, it was just too fucking heavy.

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Back in the pokey room behind the empty hardware store, Brendan had tried to watch and listen and figure out who'd be fucking up and in what way, but his heart kept stuttering some weird forgotten disjointed rhythm and his mind kept floating to a fluorescent orange café three miles north of Southport. It was three am and nine years ago but suddenly Brendan could see it all clear as fucking day. That was the moment. Not staring at a shitty coffin, sighing end to his fucking tragic riot. The parallel existence, it was above that café, it was that night, it had been close enough to close trembling fingers around and he had balked. He had looked at total-fucking-blindsiding salvation that night and had been terrified by its purity and goodness and what his filth would do to it, so he bolted. But that was it. That was his chance.

Leo was still giving it with gusto, telling the boys with their tongues hanging out for his bullshit what the Bishop wanted, but all he could hear was that voice, through chattering salty lips, moonlight glancing on the sharp smooth angles and bronze skin of the naked boy who owned it: "Then I'll take care of you".

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Leo wasn't happy. Like Brendan gave two shits. The sales patter came out: run a fucking nightclub, was he serious? He'd miss it, Leo assured him, he'd miss the buzz of all this. Yeah, maybe Leo would miss the buzz of being inside man to the Bishop, but that wasn't Brendan's problem. Why? Leo kept asking that too, eyes narrowed in calculating suspicion and Brendan was wary of those eyes. The less Leo knew the better. Brendan was bowing out, that was it. End of story.

And Joel was too happy. The kid's face actually lit up like it was fucking Christmas morning when Brendan sauntered into that office. Then he caught himself, frowned and grunted and offered him a whiskey. Brendan obliged, sat and drank with the kid and noticed the way he knocked it back fast and drummed his fingers on the bar in some weird show to distract from what was going on in his face. It was subtle as hell, a skittish flicker of the eyes, but Brendan caught it because it was like looking at a fucking home video of himself from ten years ago – all bravado and not-giving-a-shit and checking to make sure people didn't think you cared what they thought.

He couldn't bite back the stupid grin, though, when Brendan told him he wanted back in. That was different. Joel had something breathing light into him, even if his eyes were screaming with Mick – a murder that meant something, a name he remembered. Partners, Joel had said and Brendan shrugged. Whatever stories the kid wanted to invent in his head.

He didn't go near the deli. Didn't know what to do with it. Fucking stupid, really. It was his whole reason for coming back to this puny village, to this dingy club. And now he was close enough to touch and he was just clueless and fearful and impotent.

Instead, he watched. He stood on the metal balcony of his old fortress and watched. Maybe all he needed was a glimpse, or a tiny flicker of the voice carried to him on the wind, and he'd know what to do. Or maybe he just wanted to see the response. The curl of that mouth, up or down, when he clocked Brendan standing there in the sky. See what whirred through his brain, splayed all across the open face. Know where the cards lay before any bets were placed. Brendan was a fucking coward, after all.

But a week of watching drained away and nothing. Then another. And another. Brendan saw that little runty Yank sauntering in and out like an entrepreneurial dick, chatting and waving and turning fucking beetroot when he looked up at the club – that was one little satisfaction in the first nothing week – but always alone. He watched the streets, combed and raked and bent his line of vision into every hole and corner, but nothing stretched on. Joel was irritating him already, always dragging him away from his sentry post to explain the suppliers list, or the novelty nights, or the staff rota for the nightclub that hadn't changed at all in nine goddamn years. Oh, and a bit extra going on at the side, he'd said with a smug little grin and pulled a half fucking kilo of heroin out of a drawer. Brendan had actually laughed in his idiot face at that before he stalked back outside to the balcony.

By the end of three weeks, he was frayed. Nerves loose and hanging, mouth acid from so much whiskey, seeing ghosts and phantoms and even in his waking hours was living those fucking dreams. He was frayed and whipped and feeling naked under the confused suspicion in Joel's eyes and every shocked shitty face looking up at him from the street and suddenly he was fucking angry as hell and wasn't going to take this no more.

"Douglas!" he was trying to say it friendly, cheery, stark against the blue-green door he'd just slammed open with his fist.

Doug was white. Like the crash of the door made him drop a bag of flour on the ground and the dust had jumped all over him. Brendan would have loved it if the tension wasn't coiled so tightly in his chest that it hurt.

"Been a long time, Dougie-boy," Brendan was drawling, letting his shoulders settle into it. Three weeks of frustration had them knotted to rock. "My, my, you've grown. And is that a new haircut et cetera?"

Doug didn't even speak, just put his big juicy lips together and swallowed and Brendan wanted to laugh because he could actually taste the apprehension and he'd spent so much time around scumbags now that he'd almost forgotten how normal people acted when you shoved their faces in it.

"Me? I'm good, good. Thanks for asking," he continued, moving further into the shop now. God, this felt familiar. He was almost waiting for the head to poke up behind the hatch with some pathetic quip and a scowl that didn't make it all the way to the eyes. Fucking hell. "Been here, been there. Little of this, lot of that."

"He's not here," Doug spoke suddenly. He'd been backing up as Brendan advanced, like he didn't trust the counter and the cash register to stop the man closing in on him. He was right about that.

"Yeah," Brendan remarked, pressing his mouth thin and small and impatient. Small-talk done. "Where is he?"

It was constructed, the impatience. Brendan used it like a cloak, wrapping it around himself as he tucked his fingers into his chest, tight arm-fold around the lungs that weren't moving because they were holding a breath in. Balancing on a pin.

"Why do you want to know?" came the smart-ass reply, bloody DOUCHEBAG American, so Brendan was around that fucking counter in a second and had the loser's chin swallowed in the palm of his hand, forcing his forehead into the spotless glass of the display.

"Where is he, Douglas?" he was hissing and he hadn't planned on doing it this way but it'd been three long fucking weeks and nine long fucking years and he just wanted a straight fucking answer to a straight fucking question.

"Why do you want to know?" He said it again, shaky voice and choking a bit against Brendan's grip, but something defiant mixed in with it. "So you can smash him up a bit more?"

"Douglas," he was warning but it was drowned out by the pinned man.

"You fucking smashed him apart, Brendan. I know. I was here. I picked up the goddamn pieces and tried to put him together again."

Tried? Brendan's grip slackened a bit. What did he mean, tried? And now those stupid half-sleeping dreams that he'd woken with for the last nine years were squirming into his wide-awake brain again, like they had been all week. A warm, panting body throbbing its pulse against Brendan's slow, writhing jerks, filling him up.

"So what, could you sense it, you unbelievable dick?" the American was spitting, words fogging up the spotless glass and wafting in through the distant moans bubbling in Brendan's head as hands wrapped around his hips and pulled him in closer, deeper. "Did you know that he was doing whatever he could to survive? Building a new business, moving near his kids?"

Something white hot was hitting Brendan in the chest, bubbling in his oesophagus.

"Did you know and decide you better poke your goddamn head out of whatever hole you fell into and rip him to shreds for good this time? You're fucking diseased!"

Brendan dropped him, opened the hand wrapped around the stubbly chin and let him crumple to the floor like an empty bag. What the fuck was he doing?

The dream. It had changed after the funeral. After Declan told him. Every night he'd feel it, that white untameable heat curling through him and suddenly erupting in scalding tears burning a path down his cheeks, dripping onto Stephen's naked chest and then Stephen's arms, lean and strong and gentle, wrapping him up. Every morning he'd wake up and examine it, searching for the sucking, choking fury. It wasn't there anymore.

He left Douglas. What did Brendan think that meant? That he could rush to Hollyoaks and find him there, perfect and beautiful and open, and they'd collapse into each other and suddenly Brendan wouldn't be the blood-stained shell he was? That nine years of rolling around in filth would just wash away in the fucking sea?

He'd had his chance. It had dangled there, above a café north of Southport nine fucking years ago. Back when things meant something. Back when he remembered names. Back when there'd still been something left in him to save.

Not like now.

He was too late.


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER TEN: 2021 – Joel**

Joel's mouth flopped open in surprise.

It took a few seconds before he caught himself and clamped it shut again into that tight little scowl he was used to wearing. Still, he continued to stare openly at them. Three sandy-haired heads, all tanned skin and blue eyes and lithe graceful frames. Like a fucking TV ad.

They were staring back at him and the father's sculpted face was bunched up into bitterness that he was trying to fling across the street and up at Joel, floating in the sky above them. It washed off Joel. He was used to having that expression flung at him by people around here. But Jesus. What the fuck was he doing back?

The TV-ad family disappeared into Carter and Hay deli. Joel didn't move from the nightclub balcony. Jesus Christ.

He should tell Brendan, probably. The words floating through his consciousness, telling him so. He stayed rooted. Shouldn't he tell Brendan?

He swallowed. Ten years ago, he wouldn't have had to ask the question.

Ten years ago, he and Theresa lying in that old-fashioned, high-ceilinged Dublin flat that he had picked the locks of one week earlier as they fled from what he'd done. Eleven a.m. on a Saturday morning, their concocted haven of perfection suddenly swarmed on by Brendan Brady, wild-eyed and panicked and teetering on the brink of some swelling emotion. Joel felt the whole fucking atmosphere compressing him, certain this intensified version of Brendan was about Mick's body. It was over. The world had ended. Mick had won, and Joel would decay to waste inside prison walls. He'd leapt from the bed and slammed himself back against a beige wall with one hand shielding his face from whatever life-changing news Brendan was going to crash onto him.

But Brendan said nothing and slowly Joel lowered his arm and found him. Face stony. Breath steady. Everything pouring and hissing from him when he first burst in was squeezed back into its rigid casing. Impenetrable.

"What are ye doing here?" he had growled. Theresa hugged the duvet around herself, covering her nakedness against the cold. Fucking ice, that growl.

Shifting his weight, foot to foot, Joel explained. He'd heard Brendan talk about this flat, knew his way around picking a lock. His eyes deliberately avoided Brendan as he spoke. Afraid of the guilt that the other man might see there.

Brendan Brady. The psycho. The monster. The Mick thing was for Joel. And once the heat turned up, Joel had bolted. Left Brendan to face the bloody music all on his own.

"Get out," the other man had breathed, and Joel saw a little chink in that rigid casing where that other stuff was trying to leak out. What was it? Joel's breath quickened. This was the man who had looked at Mick's dead body, brains spattered across the concrete like confetti, and hadn't broken a sweat. What had happened to shake him like this?

"Brendan, what's wrong?" he'd whispered. He didn't really know if he wanted the answer. But he was looking at him full-on this time. Fuck his guilty eyes. He just wanted to help this man, this man struggling not to implode. This man who had helped him.

Should have known better than that, by then. Brendan had seized him and turfed him out of the place, stumbling into the hall in his boxers. A second later Theresa appeared, duvet still wrapped around her body, some mixture of indignation and fear written across her gorgeous face. Then their stuff came, fired through the door like missiles that they had to dodge from for fear of being hit.

Finally the door slammed and Brendan Brady's face disappeared. Forever, Joel thought.

It was six months later that he got the phone-call.

"Joel, I need you to do me a favour."

No introduction, no small-talk. No acknowledgement that the last time they'd seen each other, Joel and Theresa had been standing stark naked in a hallway with all their worldly possessions strewn about their ankles and no place to go. Joel could have said that. He could have pointed out that Brendan had a fucking nerve asking for a favour after the way he'd acted that morning. But he didn't.

"What is it, Brendan?"

He wanted him to go back. Back to Hollyoaks. Back to the club.

"You're in charge now, Joel. You run the show. I'm silent partner."

"Right, yeah," Joel had been doubtful. Natural, necessary caution. "What if I don't want to go back?"

"Course you do," Brendan told him, sure of himself. "Theresa's kid is there. You'll wind up going back in the end."

It irked Joel how spot on the fucking money he was. Theresa had been banging on about it for weeks now, going back. Joel just didn't felt ready yet.

"Well what's in it for you?" he demanded, still not ready to trust this.

"I just want someone there to keep an eye out, y'know," Brendan had mumbled, coughing a bit. "Keep an eye on Cheryl and…"

Joel knew he'd do it then. As soon as Cheryl was mentioned. Brendan knew exactly how to push his buttons, exactly how to twist the wires in Joel's head to spark off each other and make him do exactly what he wanted him to do. He knew Brendan was making him dance like a puppet, but Joel still felt that warm swell of pride in his chest that he was being trusted with this precious task. Just like Brendan had known he would.

"And what?" he prompted, not about to show his cards to early.

"And… the club, y'know," Brendan answered. "Listen Joel, Cheryl found out, about Mick."

An icy claw closed around Joel's throat.

"So, we're done, me and her. She couldn't handle it, y'know. Doesn't want no more to do with me."

The claw was squeezing, tighter and tighter, cutting off his airway.

"I need you to pretend I sold you my half of the club. That I'm gone for good. Just easier that way. It'll let people move on."

People? What people? Joel couldn't think about that though, the icy claw still had him in a death grip, trying to choke his attempting-to-sound-normal response.

"You can count on me, Bren."

Theresa hadn't understood, of course. Yeah, she wanted to go back to Kathleen Angel, but why did Joel need to go back to that club? And as a favour to Brendan? Brendan was a psycho. A monster. Mick was Brendan's fault. He was the reason that Joel woke up in a cold sweat every night, shouting at Mick's bloodied face floating in front of him until she buried his head in her soft blond hair. He was the reason that Joel's eyes were always screaming now, terrified and furious, calming only when she met them with her reassuring gaze.

Joel didn't know how to explain it to her. Everything she said was true. Mick was Brendan's fault. He did wake up every night shouting. His eyes did scream.

But Brendan wasn't a monster. Joel knew monsters. He knew Mick, leering over him with that fucking smirk on his face, waiting full minutes before he started battering him just to enjoy Joel's whimpering fear. He knew Warren, snake-like smile as he wrapped himself tightly around Joel, whispering sickly sweet promises in his ear, ready to throw him to the wolves and slither away the second he stopped being useful. Brendan was different. Yeah, he tried to discard Joel. He taunted him. He bullied him. He took Joel's hand and forced it to murder another man. But Joel could see fleeting glimpses of blueness in those black eyes. Brendan understood. Brendan knew. Joel sensed it, Brendan had been like him, alone and friendless and shaking off years of powerlessness, trying to learn to be a man and desperate not to be like the men he knew.

And Brendan had prised a grenade from Joel's fingers once, hugged away his fear afterward. Brendan had walls, yeah. A fucking towering fortress of walls. Walls that Joel would never climb his way over. But somewhere inside those walls, Joel mattered. And after his twenty years' experience of life so far, that was fucking staggering. Theresa wouldn't understand that. Couldn't.

So they went back. And nothing had changed, but everything had changed, because Joel could see a gaping ragged hole carved out that used to be filled by Brendan Brady, and suddenly he knew how to be a man after all.

It was Theresa who'd made him see the full story, in the end. A few days after they'd come back, her perched coquettishly on the desk in the club's office, rabbiting out all the local gossip from the months they'd been away. How she'd caught up on everything so quickly was beyond Joel, half-listening to her as he thumbed through legal papers in front of him.

"And apparently Ste Hay, he went well weird for a few weeks," she was saying, twisting a lock of blond hair around her finger absentmindedly. "Aunty Myra says he were unhinged, running about the place like a maniac, asking everyone if they'd seen Brendan."

"What?" Joel's head snapped up from his paperwork at the mention of that name. "When?"

"Sometime last year, I think," she mused. "Not long after we left, she said. Proper mental, like. Whenever he saw Cheryl he'd just jump on her, grabbing her arms and shake her and everything. But he's back to normal now. And Darren and Nancy, they had a baby boy, right, and he's deaf…"

Joel was back to half-listening again. Was that it? That strange, intensified version of Brendan Brady in the Dublin flat last year. Had something happened between him and Ste, something that had shaken both of them right down to their bones?

He stared at Theresa, impossibly bright hair, pink full mouth, light sunny voice. The person who pulled him back from the brink, every night, when those dreams woke him up. His saviour.

"I love you," he said suddenly, interrupting her.

She paused mid-sentence and smiled at him, bright and white and perfect, and he felt safe and alright and peaceful, almost enough to drown out the strange melancholy that was washing over him for somebody else.

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Joel was watching over the nightclub. It was filling with bodies, loose and hot and ready to throw themselves into the ritual chaos of Saturday night. He watched them as they got sloppy and wet, spilling drinks and shiny sweat, and felt a strange thrill pulse through him. Fuck yeah, this was it.

He didn't tell Brendan, in the end. Fuck it. It was a decade old. Let Ste Hay come and go and never cross paths with the hollowed-out shell that had returned to Hollyoaks a year ago. What was the point? Nobody could reawaken the dead.

"Alright man?" a voice breathed at his ear and Joel forced himself not to tense. Never let them see you react, he knew that much.

"Leo," he grunted, taking a mouthful of whiskey from the tumbler in his hand and not even glancing over to the other man.

"Packed in here tonight, what?" Leo went on, easy and friendly and deadly. "That's good."

"Yeah?" Joel asked, bracing himself. He always braced himself, when Leo was around.

"Yeah. Listen, man, me and Bren have a bit of business to attend to tonight. Be a doll and keep people away from that office there, yeah?"

"I'm trying to run a fucking club, Leo," he snarled back. "Maybe I don't have time to keep sketch for you kids."

Leo's hand squeezed his shoulder, nails digging in just a bit. "Ah sure you're a great multi-tasker, Dexter, you'll manage."

He was gone before Joel had a chance to respond. Joel raised his glass to his lips and downed the rest of the whiskey in one gulp, resisting the urge to fling the empty tumbler at the back of the Irishman's head as he walked away. Fuck Leo.

"Pour another one in there," he ordered the skinny barman in his black ChezChez uniform. The young man jumped to attention immediately and Joel rewarded him with a snarling, "Good boy".

He pushed his way through the crowd to reach the door to the balcony and stepped out past the bouncers into the black night, drinking in the cold air. Fuck Leo and fuck Brendan.

And fuck him-fucking-self.

Pleased as punch, he'd been, when Brendan strolled back into town last year. Pleased as bloody punch. It hadn't taken long for that to fade away. For him to realise that a lot of shit could happen in nine years. A lot of shit could coat a man's soul in nine years.

When he first arrived, his eyes were black and tired and numb, but Joel imagined he could see something floating in them, just under the surface. Something like hope. Three weeks later, it was evaporated so completely that Joel knew he must have imagined it in the first place. Wishful thinking, or something like that.

And three weeks later again, Leo arrived.

At first it hadn't seemed like a big deal. A business associate, from Dublin. Joel hadn't even bothered to ask what kind of business. Something dodgy, he'd presumed with a smirk. A little underhand, a little seedy. Don't ask questions, one eye over your shoulder.

Then he'd walked into the club's bathroom one Sunday morning and found them. Faceless unconscious head slumped over a battered body in the corner, two pairs of hands covered in thick sticky blood, Leo bent forward over the sink as Brendan fucked his dick doggedly into him from behind, vein throbbing on his forehead from exertion. It burned into Joel, the glistening red hand buried in Leo's hair, forcing his head down and as far away as possible so his nose was digging awkwardly into the tap. Brendan hadn't even stopped, just looked up and clocked Joel staring at the unconscious man on the ground and continued to hammer into the bent-in-half Leo, wet slapping sounds and grunts echoing around the room.

Jesus fucking Christ. Joel suddenly felt like child, like some cheeky little character from some musical number singing and dancing about pickpocketing handkerchiefs. Something dodgy? What a deadly-fucking-serious joke. There was nothing dodgy about Brendan Brady or Leo Costigan. They were pure sadistic maniacs.

He bathed in the night air now, let it fill his lungs and his stomach and his veins and his arteries, cooling him after the feverish heat of the club. So what? So let Brendan and Leo do whatever business they had to do, beat the shit out of whoever they had to beat the shit out of. Who cared? Joel ran a nightclub, that's what he did. Nothing more, nothing less. He'd even stopped that stupid bit of gear he'd been messing around with. Straight down the line.

And at the end of the night, he went home and buried his head in soft blond hair and was safe at last.

As he stood letting coolness wash over him, he heard it. A noise, coming from beneath him. Under the balcony.

What was that?

He leaned over, trying to find the source of the strange shuffling sounds, the gurgling noises of pouring liquid. The yard was black, empty, and Joel's eyes were slow getting accustomed to the darkness.

He caught a flash of movement and trained his eye. At the corner, a hulking frame, broad-shouldered in a dark bomber jacket. Familiar, somehow… He knew that figure…

He clocked it just as the figure vanished behind the corner and he felt the spasm slice him. He dragged a gasp, frightened and raw and searching. Fuck, no. It couldn't be. His feet were welded to the ground, sealed and stuck and un-fucking-movable. Fuck. He needed to move.

Brendan. He needed Brendan. He needed fucking Brendan!

With almighty effort, he ripped his feet from their twisting roots and hurled his way back inside, eyes scanning frantically.

Brendan, where the fuck was Brendan?

People were everywhere, arcing and bending and coiling in dance, pushing their heat and noise in his face. He slammed through them, reckless.

"Brendan!"

His eyes fell on him, bent over and intense on something, not hearing Joel's voice swallowed up by the pulse of music and voices. Oh this was so fucking bad, so bad. Joel pushed and shoved and whatever-the-fuck, just waded through bodies, just needed Brendan.

"Brendan!" he bellowed again, closer now, but the man still didn't look up. What the fuck was holding his attention so rapt? Joel needed him, now. This was a fucking catastrophe, for Christ's sake.

"Hey Brendan!" he roared, right behind the other man now and suddenly Joel saw it, what Brendan was bent over. His already hammering heart drilled even faster against his ribcage. Fuck, no! What was he doing to those kids? Those sandy-haired, blue-eyed kids…

He didn't think, just wrapped rough arms around his middle and pulled hard, reefing him away from this unholy fucking disaster. "Brendan, get away!"

Brendan was struggling against him, fury hissing out of his ears like a cartoon character.

"They're underage," he spat, eyes popping at the little girl who looked like she might fold in half under the weight of them.

"Brendan," Joel breathed, almost mute from Brendan's horrific ignorance of who he was facing.

"Get them out of my club." He jabbed a finger into some chest. Darren Osbourne's nephew, Joel saw vaguely. His vision was hazy. And Brendan was gone again.

Joel stood staring at the fucking wreckage, TV-ad kids racing to the door, whimpering at their perfect sunshine being ripped apart by that darkness. His feet had twisted roots into the ground where he stood again. Reeling.

No.

Fuck.

No.

He couldn't stay here. He needed Brendan. He needed fucking Brendan, remember?

Anyway, what the hell could he do? Damage was done.

He turned on his heel and bolted after Brendan, punching his way into the office he'd disappeared into.

Leo was there.

Of fucking course.

"What happened?" Leo was asking, eyes bright and dancing and drinking in Brendan's throbbing vein and clenched fist.

"Fucking kids," Brendan was grinding out. His hand was clenched round a glass of Jameson, dollops of amber liquid sloshing at the edges as his arms flew in wild gesticulation. "Kids, in my fucking club. Going to tell the cops on me, apparently. And the girl's going to set her fucking Daddy on me."

Leo howled at that. A mirthless, screeching noise. Nothing like laughter. Joel's gut twisted at it, visceral recoiling.

"Oh, I hope she does, man," Leo said. "I really hope fucking Daddy marches in here to teach you a lesson. We could have some fucking fun with that, Bren!"

And Joel couldn't help it, his voice was shaking when he spoke.

"Brendan."

Two sets of eyes swivelled to him, both as black as each other, and Joel needed to tell him about what he saw outside, about that massive hulking figure in the bomber jacket and who he knew it was, but when he spoke he was whispering.

"Brendan, they were Ste's kids."

The tumbler fell.

It thumped to the floor, cracking and splintering and sending shards spinning off into the mess of whiskey spilled across the ground. But Joel couldn't even see that. He was watching something else shatter.

Rigid casing, reinforced with steel and cement and years of fucking shit, cracking and splintering and breaking into tiny shards so the something he'd imagined seeing in those black eyes a year ago was back, but it was brighter and more definite and totally fucking real this time. And Joel didn't know what the fuck to do because he'd thought it was too late for this, that the casing was unbreakable, that the man inside was dead, and now it was about to shatter and there might not be anyone there to catch the mess when it spilled out.

"Brendan," he breathed, soft and sorry and searching for something to say, but before his mouth had a chance to spill out whatever drivel it could land on, the door of the club was smashing open and Ste Hay was barrelling down on him.

"Oi, Dexter, I want a word with you!"

Joel would take it. The accusation. The fury. The punishment. Whatever the fuck, it didn't matter, he'd take it. He wanted to take it for him. He stepped forward, shoulders squared, ready for the whole fucking barrel.

But the girl was with him, ash-faced and tear-stained, raising a trembling finger to Brendan and Ste's eyes were following the invisible line shooting from her finger and Joel could do nothing except gape as the awful Brendan Brady finally smashed to pieces and spilled all over the floor.

"Stephen."

Choking. A fucking decade of steady voice, gone.

The next thing he heard was the sickening crack, grotesque connection of skin and flesh and bone, and Brendan's face was pumping hot red blood onto the floor and Leo was shouting some battle-cry before launching on Ste, fists and teeth and knees and all.

"No," Brendan's voice was weak though, quiet and shaky and broken apart from its heap on the floor.

Joel ripped his eyes away from the mess, threw them at Leo as he closed a practised claw around the chin, shoved a knee into the belly and slammed Ste's head into the sharp corner of the filing cabinet. The girl's screams were high-pitched and frantic and swallowed up by the noise of the nightclub behind her. Ste was dazed now, reeling and staggering, and Leo was wrapping comforting hands around the back of his neck and drawing their foreheads together before sinking his cannibal teeth into the unblemished skin of his cheek.

Ste howled.

That noise got through. Joel jerked to action, suddenly, hurling himself into the mix and wrapping his arms around Leo's chest. His hand struggled towards the face, still gnashing at Ste's skin, and fingernails dug into the grooves under his eye so Leo roared and bucked and loosened his grip on Ste as he writhed out of Joel's grasp. Joel clung on, a fucking bull-rider, terrified to let the fury loose in this tiny room. Leo was swatting at him, throwing misplaced arms backwards to get him off, teeth biting at the skin of his forearm where it wrapped around his neck, but his eyes never fell from Ste as he swayed like a red rag in front of him, dizzy.

"Back the fuck off, Leo."

The voice cut through it all, through the grunts and the pants and the crying girl and the pumping music, and Joel knew that Brendan was throwing every single ounce of strength he had left into that command, the only one this furious beast in his arms would obey.

He slackened in Joel's arms, but Joel didn't let go. Partly out of caution, partly because he wanted to hold him up in front of him like a shield, so he didn't have to look at the terrible mess spilled all over his office floor. The room was silent now, apart from four panting men and one sobbing girl.

Joel waited, still not looking. Someone would speak. Someone needed to fucking speak.

"Leah," Ste voice sounded eventually, soft, and Joel could hear a quiet shuffle of bodies, a sudden muffling of the sobs. Burying the blond head in his chest, probably. "It's okay sweetheart, it's okay."

Leo's chest was rising and falling rhythmically under Joel's arms. Calming.

"It's okay sweetheart." Ste's gentle, soothing noises were washing through the room, settling on them all. Joel loosened his grip. Maybe it was okay. He still didn't want to look, though.

"Come on, Leah, you're okay," the voice caressed on and Joel was on the verge of dropping his arms completely when Ste spoke the next words. "Let's get you out of here, love."

More shuffling, feet leaving. Joel did drop his arms then. No fucking need to restrain Leo anymore. Nothing to shield him from the messy insides pooling around the shards of smashed man littering the office floor.


	11. Chapter 11

**CHAPTER ELEVEN: 2021 – Ste**

Ste Hay was born an underdog. Childhood trampled him and left him snarling. Panting from boot-kick rejection.

They rescued him. Happy sunshined people stroked him and tugged him into light. His children pulled him there. Blinking and baffled at perfection he created. Ste Hay walked in daylight.

But always, darkness was calling his name. Whispering in his ear. Intriguing. Devouring. Familiar.

And Brendan called his name.

Greed. Lust. Obsession. Desperation. It purred at him. It wanted him. It sated him like artificial light could not.

It bled him.

Both trapped in eternal waltz. Colliding smash together and spiralling apart. Always orbiting each other. It was a waltz to a funeral.

In the Irish Sea three miles north of Southport, smashing together was forever. Two condensed to one. Melded. In the dark, in the light, it didn't matter. They were fused.

Then Brendan ripped away. Ste Hay cracked in two.

Terrified, he flung himself back against the artificial world but now all he could taste was the plastic, all he could hear was the scratching of the soundtrack, all he could see was the flickering blue lines as the transmission wavered. He stared at daylight through a window.

In the dark, in the light, it didn't matter. All of him was numb.

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Leah.

That was what mattered now.

Leah.

"Shush, shush, sweetheart."

The voice sounded far away. Calm. Sure. His own voice.

His head stung where it had met the filing cabinet. Whatever. That was okay. He just needed to focus on Leah.

Feet were guiding both of them. His feet. One in front of the other. Then the other in front of the first. Then repeat. Wading through bodies, staggering out the exit, wobbling down the stairs. One vague hand tangled in Leah's hair, stroking terror out of her trembling shoulders. Stroking numbness into his own.

"You're okay, sweetheart. It's okay."

He would take her away from this. She was sunny. She was light. She was what mattered now.

She was what would keep his scratched-raw insides from swirling into some massive tsunami. He just needed to focus on her.

"Stephen!"

That was sharp. Crystal clear. A phantom voice from his own swirling insides, cracking out the call like a lasso to jerk him to a halt, to drag him arms-flailing backwards up those stairs and through those bodies and into that office. Leah, he thought desperately, knotting his fingers further into her golden head. Concentrate on Leah.

"Stephen, wait!"

But no, it was no phantom. It wasn't swirling from his own addled insides. It was real, out loud and deadly familiar, fired at his defenceless back like an arrow that screeched straight through the reverent mantra of his daughter's name right into the fabric of his brain and made it bleed. Gushing, pumping rivers of a million shades of red. He wanted to cling on, keep his fingers twisted in the blond hair. He wanted to shout Leah at himself, shout against the rushing noise of blood. He wanted to keep moving, to stumble across the little street and into the busy noisy pub to Lucas, to Doug and Tony and Barney, to where he could take Leah's head out of his chest and show her that the world was still bright and sunny and she'd never need to worry about black infection again.

He wanted that.

But he stopped.

Like he knew he would.

"Stephen, please."

Clear clean slice. It slid through his wild internal shouting, through the massive rushing wave of blood inside his head. The only thing he could hear. The only thing he could ever hear. Brendan.

His fingers were shaking as he untangled them from their yellow safety net, gently pulled the face out of his shirt, wet and blotchy red-and-white.

"Go back to the pub," he whispered. He wanted his voice to be full of calm reassuring sunshine, his face to be smiling and light and not caking in dried blood from the skin-head's attack.

"Dad… no!" she gasped. She was facing towards him and she could see the darkness waiting just a few metres behind. Waiting for him.

"Leah," His voice was harsh this time. Harsh and rigid and commanding, a voice he never used to her or Lucas because he wanted their whole existence to be soft and cushioned. But what he wanted had evaporated. He had her by the shoulders now and was turning her firmly, propelling her out through the wrought iron gates of purgatory and towards the bright light across the little village. Small and hunched and hesitant. Ste felt that tsunami swelling over him as he watched her leave, untameable and unable to ignore. His stomach lurched with the strange sense of falling and knowing that there was no net to catch him anymore.

He turned around.

The sight devoured him. Brendan. Tall and broad and head bent forward. Arms hanging aimlessly, fingers twitching pointlessly at his side. Chest rising and falling a little too fast. Hairline creeping backward, wiry silver threads weaving through the black, digging grooves scratched into the forehead. Cloaking moustache and straight nose and sunken cheeks and parted lips and hooded lids and round screaming begging sinking black and blue eyes.

"Stephen," he said again, and it didn't screech like an arrow this time. It was a breath, exhausted and devoid, hanging miserably in the air between them for a meagre moment before it faltered and stuttered and stumbled to the ground.

"What?" Ste said, and he was surprised by how flat his voice was, how loud and cold and bitter. The crashing waves inside his brain were deafening now, smashing one on top of the other until he couldn't tell them apart. When he spoke, it was bitter fury he was spitting. "What do you want, Brendan?"

The other man's mouth opened and closed. Like a goldfish. Like a man who didn't have a clue how to answer that question. Ste knew that feeling.

"Stephen," he repeated again, and his black and blue eyes were flickering all over Ste's face and body and driving him absolutely fucking mental because he'd imagined this moment – this moment, happening right now – a million times in ten years but now that it was here he was paralysed and floating inert because a thousand different sensations were slamming him from every side and all that seemed to be clawing its way out of his internal uproar was tight acrid resentment.

"Yeah, you already said that," he bit, some weird masochistic thrill running through him at the flinch on the hollowed out face. The screaming slamming blood-rush was demanding to know why that face was so hollow, why the hooded lids and round eyes were so dark and sinking. He was being told to fall on his knees and beg for forgiveness for not being enough, for failing to find the right words in that orange café north of Southport to make him understand that it would be okay, and his whole body, legs and arms and stomach and chest, were filling up with rage because WHY wasn't he enough? Why had Brendan yanked him into that consuming waltz and then cleaved him apart to stagger numbly through the rest of his existence?

"I just… I'm sorry," Brendan stumbled out and suddenly ten years of barren waste were pressing down on Ste and futile angry despair was crackling through. How the fuck could he say that? How could he possibly have known how utterly fucking ruined everything was since he left and just wait until Ste barrelled in on top of him by chance before he said it. "I'm… your kids... I didn't know. I mean… Thanks for what you did for Declan."

The last sentence spilled out of him in a rush, gushing fast, and Ste wanted to seize his arms and rattle him and shout that of course he was going to do whatever he fucking could for Declan, for the only link he had left after Brendan left him in that fluorescent orange nightmare. He wanted to but he couldn't because right that second he hated the man so much it took his breath away.

"Stephen."

It was there again, pleading, begging, and he was taking a step forward and searching for something in Ste's face and body other than taut tense hostility. Ste couldn't budge.

"How long have you been back then?" His voice was clipped. Protected.

Brendan was shifting his weight, shrugging his shoulders, running long graceful fingers over his bloody face and, fuck, Ste wanted those fingers on him but he COULDN'T.

"'Bout a year."

Plain. Careless. So un-fucking-apologetic.

Suddenly, Ste was seething, twisting burning fury screaming from his stomach to his chest, searing into his arms and legs and ripping through his immobility. He lunged forward, foam spilling, and grabbed fistfuls of the vile designer suit, hard muscle of the chest wall grazing against his clenched fingers. He heaved, dragging the world-aged face into his and Brendan just let him. Just loose and docile and face sore but unsurprised, like surprise was something he didn't have in him to feel anymore. They were close now. Nose to nose. Two sets of parted lips an inch apart. Ste's whole body tingled with it, heat from the knuckles pressing into the white shirt scorching its way up his arms and into his chest, his neck, his face. Close enough to smell the musky sweat. Close enough to taste the whiskey breath. Close enough to feel the singing flesh.

Like he could have been for ten fucking years. Like he could have been for "'bout a year", thirty fucking miles down the road.

"You ruined my life, Brendan," he said, honest and simple and straight. Brendan looked like he was bleeding under his gaze, but he just hung limp and lifeless, yanked up and forward by Ste's fists, unable to break away from him or stand on his own two feet.

"I'm… sorry–"

"I don't care." It was a snarl, gnashing and biting and vicious. It curled out of some dark recess and whipped into the night. "I don't care that you're sorry. It's just words, Brendan. You knew where I was. You knew I would wait. All you left me with was some fat tosser dressed like a fucking carrot telling me you told him to say you were sorry."

"Stephen–"

"It don't matter!" he barrelled on. He didn't want him speaking, feeling warm breath spill from that mouth into his own an inch away. He didn't want those eyes – those eyes with their seeing and understanding and wanting – scorching into his brain. He didn't want that heartbeat, jolting and hot and so fucking real, hammering into the skin of his fist where it curled against the chest. He didn't want any of it but he couldn't move a hairbreadth away. "It don't matter, Brendan, whatever you're going to say don't matter. It's too late. You're too late. Ten fucking years too late."

It was honesty, ragged unkempt honesty, but inside Ste revolted. No, he didn't mean any of that. It wasn't too late, could never be too late. He could feel the muscles in his thighs trembling now, bucking under the weight of holding his furious self and Brendan in the air, but he couldn't unfurl those fists. The tremble moved up through his body, quivering through the lean muscles of his back, shaking into the taut clench in his arms, cracking him apart.

It was like Brendan sensed it. Like he felt Ste fracturing under this, not able to support them both much longer. He took his own weight back, planted feet onto the ground and sank. His shoulders drooped, heavy and weary and defeated.

Ste panicked. No, he didn't want Brendan sinking away. He couldn't feel the breath on his mouth anymore. And he still couldn't fucking move.

Brendan's hands were coming up – wonderful, rough and soft, gentle and strong – closing themselves around Ste's white-knuckled grip. Ste swelled at them, at the long graceful fingers that he remembered brushing across his lips, sliding across his skin, pressing into him. But what were they doing now? They were wrapping around his wrists and pulling them loose, away from their clenched vice on the tailored suit. Ste didn't want this. He didn't want the long fingers to pull his hands away and drop them to his sides, but he was just a rag doll bending and twisting and following every order that they gave him.

Impossible, incredible, Brendan's face was pressing towards him now. Close and sweet and bitter. He could feel the scratch of the moustache against his left ear, grating and prickling and satisfying. His eyes could hardly fucking see but vaguely the pulse in Brendan's neck throbbed in front of him. And then Ste felt the lips part against his ear, hot and wet and filling his head with a million different things they had whispered to him in a different life.

"I am sorry, Stephen. Please know I am."

And suddenly he was vanished. Disappeared. Evaporated into a cloud of smoke and mirrors so Ste didn't know if he'd ever been there at all or if the whole thing was just a screaming tragedy or a swelling symphony that he invented in his own deranged brain.

Ste gaped, staring at the empty air. What the fuck had just happened? The panic was screeching louder in him now, real and hammering and fucking loud. Where was Brendan gone? Had Ste just failed again, just stood stupid and motionless and not landed on any of the right stuff to say or do to make him stay?

"Dad!" the voice was high-pitched, frightened, floating through the swirling mist of memory in his head. Leah. His sunshined girl.

"Dad!" he heard again and he saw her this time, poking a nervous head out from behind the pillar that supported the heavy gate. She hadn't left. It coursed through him, momentary realisation that she had seen and heard all that, but it was swallowed up by everything else that was dragging him under in a second. What the fuck had happened? He had stood face to fucking face with the man who creaked inside his bones for the last ten years and all he had given him was spite.

Leah was on top of him now, wrapping her fragile arms around his middle. He let her hold him up though, buried his fingers in her blond hair again. His bright yellow safety net. Only he'd already fallen into a bloody twisted heap on the ground.

He breathed her in, her sweet rosy scent. He felt the beat of her heart against his stomach, calming his own, until he was murmuring again, stroking her hair and whispering his mantra – "it's okay, sweetheart, you're okay" – but nothing was fucking okay.

They swayed like that, rocking slowly back and forth against each other in the dark courtyard, moonlight falling onto her fair hair and making it glow, and slowly Ste's crashing insides settled into one unifying motion. Brendan. He needed to see Brendan again. Then it would be okay.

"Aw, this is really touching."

Ste froze at the voice. He felt Leah still in his arms.

Cold. Sarcastic. Strangely familiar.

"Who's there?" he managed, arms still locked around his little girl, fingers twisted in her hair.

"You know, I've always said it about revenge," the voice continued and Ste thought he could see movement in the direction it was coming from. Something dark and hulking, lurking near the corner beneath the balcony. "No matter how good it is, you always end up feeling like it wasn't good enough. Like it could've been better."

He knew it, he knew that voice. Where the fuck from? And why was it making his heart pound like this, making his grip tighten around his daughter?

"Well it looks like my revenge just got better," it went on, and the hulking figure moved forward now, out of the shadows and into the wan moonlight so that Ste's stomach coiled into a caustic knot before his eyes even clocked the barrel of the gun. His fingers were lances, digging into Leah's scalp.

"Whatcha reckon, rat boy?" Warren Fox smirked.


	12. Chapter 12

**CHAPTER TWELVE: 2021 – Brendan**

Brendan fled. He spun on his heel and sprinted away, screeched up the stairs and dove back into the darkness, waded through the sweaty mess to the brick cell he had hid in many times before. Because this shit was way too heavy.

Chasing after him hadn't even been a choice. Brendan had lain on the floor of his invaded cell, blood dribbling from his nose, hearing the panting breaths of four men and the sobbing gasps of one little girl and staring into the face that had consumed the last ten years and thought he had crumpled so completely under the weight that he couldn't break any more. Then he left. Whatever weight had been pressing on him was nothing compared to that. The force of that void. Like the absence of air. Scrambling to his feet, swiping the back of a hand against his bleeding face, stumbling out of the office and staggering into the unpredictable world had been mindless. He just needed oxygen.

Joel and Leo were still there when he crashed back in, faces pressed close and tension crackling. They swung toward him. Brendan hardly noticed.

Sorry. That was all he had been able to splutter. He reached him and he breathed air again. Relief. It flooded him. But then he turned and demanded words, demanded some reason for Brendan just needing to fucking breathe, and sorry was all Brendan had in him. He had led a zombie life for ten years. Forgotten how to speak. Forgotten how it felt to feel, and suddenly feeling was slamming him in the chest hard and making him speechless. All he could think was how fucking beautiful he was, how fucking beautiful and perfect and impossible. And all he wanted was to see that rigid stone face soften, just for one tiny second, to be gentle and vulnerable the way it used to be.

"Brendan, are you alright?" Joel was asking now, uncertainly, and Brendan realised he was clinging on to the filing cabinet with both hands, letting Stephen's warm blood stain his left palm, softly smacking his forehead against the open drawer again and again. He didn't answer. Tried to chuff a laugh, but it came out high and keening.

You ruined my life… He didn't know how to handle that.

Sorry, that was all he said back. Over and over. All he could come up with. Those blue pools that once held him in watery gaze and told him they'd take care of him, that once swelled around him and handed him his chance at salvation. Those blue pools glaring into him and drowning him with feeling in the chest and all he could choke around them was sorry. It's just words, Brendan. And he was right. Words, that's all they were. Because he'd spent ten years stamping on that part of his brain that felt stuff, ten years taking whatever shit he'd lived through and dumping it on top of other people so that he didn't have to deal with it no more, and now when that feeling slammed him in the chest he couldn't connect it to his brain. His brain was for thinking, for saying stupid empty words. That was it.

Leo was talking now. He knew now.

"Take it that's the fuckin' ghost of Christmas past, then?" he was spitting, but Brendan could barely hear the bitterness above the screaming in his head.

You ruined my life… It's just words, Brendan… It don't matter… It's too late...

"Bit on the skinny side, Bren, even for you," the skin-head was hissing at him, leering in close. "Not much meat in that arse, what?"

The sound of him echoed, wrapped up tight and bitter and trying to fling words at him like carving knives, but still rolled at the edges like soft dough. Like he remembered.

You ruined my life… It's just words, Brendan… It don't matter… It's too late…

"I'm talking to you, Brendan! Fucking look at me!" Leo trying to force himself into Brendan's eye-line, trying to pull him back into now and here and him.

His face. His fucking face. Older. Heavier. More worry lines scratched in. Less adventure in the eyes. But still it was so perfect.

You ruined my life... It's just words, Brendan... It don't matter... It's too late...

"Fucking look at me Brendan! You're not fucking leaving me on the floor!" Leo's grubby greedy hands were pawing at the collar of his shirt, trying to reef his head back from it rhythmic punishment against the metal cabinet. Brendan shook them off.

When he grabbed the suit, pulled in right up close. The face, velvet skin and gentle lips and cheeky nose, all of it right up close. The fucking smell of him, tangy like lime.

You ruined my life… It's just words, Brendan… It don't matter… It's too late…

"Brendan!"

The screaming wouldn't stop, it was just on and on and on. Just an inch apart, and ten years distance away.

You knew I would wait…

"What the hell is that?" he heard. Joel's voice. Cutting through Leo, through his own screaming brain. "Can you hear that?"

"What?" Brendan muttered.

"That screaming."

Joel could hear it too?

Brendan halted in his slow, rhythmic thumping. He stilled. If Joel could hear it too, then it wasn't just his own fucked-up head. What the hell was it?

"Fuck the screaming, kid. Brendan, will you fucking look at me?"

Mutely, Brendan nodded towards the closed office door and Joel obediently yanked it open. The screaming blasted into the tiny room, big frenzied howls above the loud base. Screaming bleeding panic. Joel's eyes widened.

"Shit, Brendan…"

Brendan shuffled a few steps forward, peered out into the crowd. They were manic. Twisted, frightened faces bawling drunkenly at the ceiling. Flinging limbs, scrabbling bodies, noise and terror and sweat and tears. It didn't quicken Brendan's pulse. Couldn't. But he was hyper-alert, feeling every breath of wind against his stubbled cheek, catching every hue of fear, every sound of despair. Beside him, he could sense Joel absorbing it, filling with the panic himself without knowing what it was for. Just because it surrounded him. Leo too, better at hiding it but still twitching, still edging closer, still distracted from Brendan by the jerking pull of self-interest.

Because neither of them had spent ten years waiting until it was over.

Brendan scanned the black room, emptying of the bodies it had held as they tumbled through exits and suddenly he saw it. The cause of all this furore. All this fury. Passion. Pain. Manmade destroyer of man.

Fire.

"Fuck, man, the fucking kip is on fucking fire!" That was Leo, of course.

The other two were tumbling out now, struggling against each other through the office door like some cartoon. Brendan wanted to laugh at them, at the way they exploded out together in the end, totally oblivious to the fact that they were clinging on to each other desperately. The flames were cracking from the ground floor, licking their way up the stairs towards the feet of clubbers stampeding haphazardly towards the fire escape that Brendan had pummelled his way through a few minutes ago. They were smashing up against it, big tides of people that were too many for the little door. Brendan wanted to laugh at that too. Like watching a baby slamming a triangular block against a circular hole again and again and again and not understanding why it wouldn't work.

He wanted to sit down in that office and put his feet up on the table the way he used to in the old days and listen to them scream and smash against the exit and just wait for the flames to knock politely and poke their head in and give him what he'd been waiting a decade for.

He wanted that. His brain knew he wanted that. But some weird feeling was smattering in his chest that he couldn't understand. His brain couldn't reach his chest anymore. That connection was severed.

Inexplicably, he was striding to the abandoned DJ box, killing the screeching music, grabbing the microphone.

"SILENCE!"

The shock wave made them obey. He had them for a second, rendered docile and obedient by their helplessness as smoke curled stroking fingers around their ankles. His to command. To do what he would. The puppet master. He seized it greedily.

"EVERYONE WALK – SLOWLY – TO THE EXIT. ONE AT A TIME. ORDERLY QUEUE."

And somehow, incredibly, they did it. One by one, toppling out. Silent save for a few whimpers, glancing up at him on his podium like some guardian angel. He was biting back the laughter now. Biting back the urge to grab the mike again and shout, "Actually, fuck that, we're all gonna die. Arrrgggghhh!"

But no, that weird feeling in his chest wouldn't let him. He just stood and watched over his flock as they exited, escaping freedom, clinging on desperately to that delusion they called life. He could feel soot on his tongue now, ash-heavy air rising up from the flames that were growing closer and closer to the upper level. He wanted to stay here. To stand on his podium and see them all leave until it was just him and the heat and the orange light. But his feet were climbing down, tumbling in behind the last kid to leave – that skinny fucking barman that he didn't like to look at – and spilling out of the building coughing the smoke away like a goddamn cliché.

The crowd had swelled by now, clubbers mixed with neighbours, passers-by, pub-goers, all reflecting the violent orange glow in their glassy eyes as they stared at the stunning destruction. It roared at the night.

Brendan toppled in with them all, felt himself swallowed up by the crowd and by their collective awe and relief. He didn't understand this, the weird disjointed tightness in his chest that seemed like it should be making his pulse race, should be making grateful tears leak out of his eyes, if he wasn't a zombie.

"Jesus Christ!" Joel was bent over double, coughing and wheezing against the panic he pretended was smoke. Brendan could hear Theresa's shrieks before he saw the dazzling streak of peroxide hurtle from the crowd of onlookers. That weird thing in his chest squeezed tighter.

"Did everyone get out okay?" he could hear himself asking now – what the fuck?! – shouting it at Don, the bouncer on the downstairs entrance. "It looks like it started downstairs, did everyone get out okay from the ground floor?"

"Yeah, yeah," Don was grunting. Trying to hold back the coughing and wheezing himself. "Everyone got out. Seemed like it started from outside, took its time working its way in."

"And what about the cellar? Any of the bar staff down there?"

"No, Brendan, we were all on the floor," chimed skinny-kid, fucking reverent look in his eyes. "We're all okay, everyone got out."

"Good, good."

Five-star fucking hero.

Behind him he could hear the death-grip of nature around his club but he wasn't watching it. Already his eyes were scanning the crowd, searching into the clump of pub-goers ogling the scene. Just because he knew he was there. Just because he didn't have the energy not to comb the place for him. Just because that weird tightness in his chest couldn't make him cry but made him need to his face. He could see Tony Hutchinson… Darren Osbourne...

"Brendan!" It was Joel, standing up straight again and now digging his fingers into Brendan's arm like he was the fucking messiah.

Brendan shook him off, eyes still intent. There was the boy, the one in the Man City Jersey. The one he grabbed by the collar.

Lucas.

"Brendan, the fire," Joel wasn't giving up. No surprises there. "I know who started it…"

Douglas. There he was. Hands squeezing into the boy's shoulders. But there was something wrong. Wrong with his face. Weirdly, Brendan's pulse started to trot a little. What? Brendan's pulse didn't trot.

"Earlier… I was out on the balcony, and I saw him in the courtyard, Brendan."

And Brendan didn't like that either. Someone in the courtyard. No, he didn't like that. That was where he had been. With Stephen. Where he'd left Stephen. His pulse was cantering now, pock-marking the ground with hoof-prints. Why the fuck was that Yank's face so mashed up? Looking around himself like he'd fucking lost something. And why couldn't Brendan find the face he was looking for anywhere in the crowd?

"It was Warren, Brendan."

And he just knew.

"BRENDAN!"

The bellow was lost to him because he was smashing towards the burning pit now, feet pounding the cement, arms swirling big pointless circles, head bowed and intent and flinging itself face first into the blasting heat and through the door. His heart was beating now, alright. The sight of Mother Nature was sloshing terrified panic in his belly now. Inside was deafening, cackling hysteria as She tore at manmade vanity, shrieking cracks and snaps of furious justice. The light of it scorched his eyeballs, drawing garish patterns on his retina that seared through into his brain and blinded him. Fuck. No. Where were the steps? She screeched and howled and flashed and pawed. The fucking steps. He just knew he needed to get to the steps.

The smoke was filling him up now, blocking up the light but filling his eyes with soot instead. He staggered on, deeper inside. His chest was sore, actual physical pain, and he could feel it growing curling, curving tendrils up towards his brain to squeeze and constrict it until all the apathy and logic oozed out. Until all he could think was vast untempered terrified horrified devouring emotion. He needed those steps. He had needed nothing in ten years, but he needed those fucking steps.

Stone hit him in the face. Smacked him, hard and fast, in his already bleeding nose. He gasped and coughed against the lung-full of ash he dragged in with it. But the stone – it was a pillar. And if the pillar was here, then…

He hurtled through the wooden doorframe and down the concrete steps, scratching a palm against the rough stone surface of the wall to guide him through the pitch black. It was quieter down here, the vengeful flames hadn't swirled their way into this hole yet, but the air was thick with acrid smoke. Brendan heaved against it, pressing his shirt up against his mouth to filter. Panic was still leaking through him, but it was lessening. He was blind against the darkness. But he was here. He just knew.

"Stephen?" he choked out, coughing on the exhale. "Stephen, where are ye?"

He didn't even hear the moan, not above the whip-crack fire overhead. He sensed it. The far right corner.

He was crawling all fours along the ground in a second, groping unseeing against the concrete floor, and then all at once his hands found a body. He pawed it, blindly, feeling the scene. Torso stretched out open and long and legs sprawled across the ground and arms yanked roughly above the head where grizzly rope knotted them to metal piping. His fingers scrabbled at it, working the fraying fibres with no vision to help him and feeling them give up their fight against his ministrations and let the arms fall away. He caught the chest on his knees as it slid down, let his hands run up under the light cotton t-shirt to slide across the puckered nipple and press into the throbbing, thrusting heart. Fucking alive and beating blood. Brendan felt it like it was pumping life into him. Still cloaked in black, his hands searched their way up and grazed against the light stubble and the soft cheek and the wet lips and suddenly his mouth was down on them. He sucked it in, the sweet moisture of Stephen and incredibly the limp body rolled back to life. It pushed up into him, curled fingers from those twisted arms into his neck, scratched at his hair. Pulling him in, kissing him back, forgiving his trespasses. The fire was imaginary, everything was that wasn't this. He stretched his tongue inside, felt his mouth fill with Stephen, sliding and moulding against each other because they'd never forgotten how. He was a blind man in the darkness and all he knew was the smell of soot and lime, the taste of ash and mint, the feel of flimsy cotton t-shirt and warm skin and wet sweet mouth. And those fingers tingling sparks into the back of his neck and his hair. Wanting him back.

He felt Stephen splutter a cough into his open mouth and it pulled him back. Fire. Fuck. Brendan needed to get him out.

"Okay, Stephen, okay." It was a croak, punched out as he wrenched himself away from the beaconing lips. His unseeing hands travelled from the throat to the shoulders, pulling him up. "Okay. You think you can walk for me, Stephen?"

"Bren, no…" His voice was damp and defeated and beseeching. It made Brendan's windpipe tighten even more against the smoke that was spilling into the tiny room.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Brendan quieted his vulnerability. "I gotcha, see."

Loosely he slid a strong arm beneath Stephen's armpit and wound it around his back – that back, gentle ripples of bone and muscle, so unbelievably real – pulling Stephen's face in against his own heartbeat so they were sealed together, waterproof. Then he planted his own feet on the ground and drove them both up to standing, still enmeshed.

"See, see that? It's okay," he was murmuring but his gut was flipping now. White-hot flames were starting to lick at the wooden doorframe above their heads. Sudden vision was thrown on top of the senses already overwhelming him. Stephen was lurching, swaying against his pinning arm. Dancing flame-light was showing Brendan half-closed lids and charcoaled lips and wheezing, gulping rise and fall of ribs. And his head shaking, over and over and over, trying to cling on to consciousness.

"No, Brendan…" He sounded cracked, jagged. Brendan tightened his grip around that real back and pressed tight lips to his glistening forehead and plunged one reeling step forward, dragging him to the steps.

"It's okay, I've gotcha Stephen. Just a few steps, that's all. Nearly there."

But Stephen's legs weren't helping. His hands weren't holding on. They were digging against Brendan's chest, pushing him weakly away. The smoke was getting thicker now, heavy and black and suffocating so Brendan was starting to cough against it himself.

"Bren, Leah…"

Brendan caught her as he spoke the name. One screeching crack of white fire flashing against the exit and the whole stony cellar – the cellar where he'd kissed him first, the cellar where he'd hit him first, the cellar where he'd murdered first – was filled with brilliant light and suddenly Brendan caught sight of the little crumpled heap lying a foot from where he'd found his Stephen, yellow hair stained with black. Already unconscious. And that moment Brendan felt Mother Nature and God and the Grim Reaper all plunge their righteous hands into his chest and squeeze his heart to a standstill. His heart that had just started beating again tonight. The cruellest fucking twist of his whole cruel fucked-up twisted life.

"Please, Brendan." He wasn't pushing anymore, no strength left to do that. Just letting his forehead drop into Brendan's throat, letting Brendan's arm hold him up and pull him in. Crushing whatever energy was left inside into the whispered plea. "Get her out."

Brendan's face was ugly and wet, immediately and completely soaked. The first tears since that night in the Irish Sea when that mouth told him, "I'll take care of you". And Stephen… Jesus, Stephen was barely conscious now, slowly deadening weight in Brendan's arms, so he couldn't even fight or bargain or sob or beg.

He wanted to collapse under it. To fall to the ground with his precious deadweight and just let what would happen happen. To pretend he hadn't heard the plea. To finish out his sinful, selfish days with one last gluttony.

And probably, he would have, if the plea hadn't come from that mouth.

"Stephen, Stephen," he was breathing it into hair, squeezed around the coughing, and Stephen wasn't even awake enough to answer anything other than indecipherable moans. Not even awake enough to hear Brendan tell him… Tell him what? Fuck, all he was saying was the name, over and over and over, like a prayer. And the flames were caressing the exit now, running intoxicating fingers along the wood, coaxing it into destruction, so he didn't even have time to pray.

"Ste-phen. St-eph-en." He kept spluttering it, against his own hiccups and sobs and coughs and wheezes. He lowered him onto the stone floor – this stone floor, this one that he'd knocked him onto at the very start – and kissed his cheekbones and his closing eyes and his nose and his ears and his hair and his neck and his collarbone and then he just had to reef himself. Just go. Now. Away. Because he would stay there until the orange flames melted them, just doing this and wondering why the fuck he hadn't been doing it for the last ten fucking years. But "please, Brendan", it was filling up his head and the whole room.

Please, Brendan. Please, Brendan. Please, Brendan.

He scrambled to the corner and seized the slack body of the girl, heaving her up into his arms. His legs trembled under it and he choked against the smothering smoke but he lunged forwards, and he couldn't look. He stepped over it, the motionless lump on the floor and couldn't check to see if the chest was still moving up and down. Couldn't glance to see the ash-grey skin on that perfect face. Couldn't look and know he wouldn't look again.

Just eyes fixed forward. One foot. Then the other. Then one foot. Then the other. Then one foot. Then the other. Upstairs was ablaze ferocious and magnificent, fire screaming towards them like nightmare monsters. Brendan couldn't even see it. Couldn't feel the flames licking at his skin. His arms squeezed onto his precious package, blond head lolling limply from side to side with every step. One foot. Then the other. Then one foot. Then the other.

He was blind again. Snow-white light scorching through his pupils. He would never see again. Just one foot. Then the other. Then one foot. Then the other.

They strode out of heat, out of suffocation, out of shrieking light. It followed Brendan. One foot. Then the other. Then one foot. Then the other.

"Brendan, Jesus!"

People were replacing the noise of the fire now. Charging at him. Screaming. Rubbing paws against his skin. Blinding him with question-filled faces. Blue-light ambulances and fire trucks and TV cameras and police cars screeching onto the little street. Shouting and movement and action and determination.

It was all too late.

And someone was taking the blond girl out of his arms. Douglas.

"It's okay, Brendan, I've got her," his voice was soft and wet but trying to be strong and dry. No. She was Brendan's charge. Brendan's promise. Brendan's purpose. "Come on, Brendan, you're going to collapse. Let me take her."

But please, Brendan. That's all he had.

"Please, Brendan," Douglas was saying, mutilating the words with his accent. No. He prised at Brendan's tight grip and suddenly he had help, paramedics in their garish yellow jackets overrunning him and pulling the child away.

The void walloped him. A hard low snap of fist in the stomach. He staggered and they pawed at him, paramedics fingering him experimentally and looking for the damage. But the damage wasn't out here. It was in pit of fire, crumpled in a motionless heap on a concrete floor, and Brendan's bleeding heart had finally twisted a path up into his head so the blood gush was drowning him.

Fuck that.

He charged at it. He met the burning building running and he dove back inside, oblivious to the searing fire and brimstone ready to claim him and uncaring of the flames engulfing the cellar entrance, he just soared lightly through it all and across the concrete steps to the heap of limbs and body and beating heart, all lit up by the brightness overhead. He sank beside it. Pulled it up to sitting. Wrapped his own legs around its legs. Pressed his chest against its back. Shrugged his arms across its shoulders and hugged it.

And he'd just sit here, like this, wrapped around his bundle. Because those flames would burn their way through his skin and his flesh and his muscle and his bone before they would be allowed to touch any part of his Stephen. He dragged his lungs full of the thick smoke and felt his mind dim. Cemented around the unconscious body.

His Stephen.


End file.
